.C  5  ~5 

v,  1-5 


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Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 


in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/ethicalsignificaOOwrig_O 


The  Ethical  Significance 
of  Feeling ,  Pleasure ,  and 
Happiness  in  Modern 
Non- Hedonistic  Systems 

WILLIAM  KELLEY  WRIGHT ’  Ph.V. 


PHILOSOPHIC  STUDIES 

NUMBER  I 


CHICAGO 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  PRESS 

1907 


r 


PHILOSOPHIC  STUDIES 


i.  The  Ethical  Significance  of  Feeling,  Pleasure,  and  Happiness  in  Modern 
Non-Hedonistic  Systems.  By  William  Kelley  Wright.  96  pp., 
royal  8vo,  paper,  net  50  cents;  postpaid  .  .  .  .  .  .  .54 

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PHILOSOPHIC  STUDIES 

OF  ^ 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO 


EDITED  BY 

JAMES  H.  TUFTS 


EDITORIAL  ANNOUNCEMENT 


The  Department  of  Philosophy  in  the  University  of  Chicago  will 
issue  a  series  of  monographs  in  philosophy,  including  ethics,  logic  and 
metaphysics,  aesthetics,  and  the  history  of  philosophy.  The  successive 
monographs  will  be  numbered  consecutively,  but  will  not  be  arranged 
as  volumes.  These  studies  will  be  similar  to  the  series  of  Contribii- 
tions  to  Philosophy ,  but  will  not,  like  that  series,  contain  psychologi¬ 
cal  papers,  or  reprints  of  articles  previously  published. 

Beyond  the  present  initial  number,  the  Department  announces  as 
No.  2  The  Respective  Standpoints  of  Logic  and  Psychology ,  by  Matilde 
Castro,  Ph.D. 


THE  ETHICAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  FEEL¬ 
ING,  PLEASURE,  AND  HAPPINESS  IN 
MODERN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


BY 


WILLIAM  KELLEY  WRIGHT,  Ph.D. 


CHICAGO 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  PRESS 

1907 


Copyright  1907  By 
The  University  of  Chicago 


Published  October  1907 


Composed  and  Printed  By 
The  University  of  Chicago  Press 
Chicago,  Illinois,  U.  S.  A. 


NOTE 


The  writer  desires  to  express  his  gratitude  to  Professors  Mead,  Moore, 
and  Angell,  and  Dr.  Watson,  of  the  University  of  Chicago,  with  whom 
he  has  had  courses  in  ethics  and  psychology.  His  chief  obligation,  especi¬ 
ally  in  the  preparation  of  this  essay,  is  to  Professor  Tufts,  of  whose  counsel 
and  sympathy  he  has  largely  availed  himself,  both  in  the  definition  of  the 
problem  and  also  in  specific  points  of  interpretation  and  criticism. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


PAGE 

I.  Introduction  .  7 

II.  The  Perfectionists .  9 

a.  Descartes . 13 

b.  Malebranche . 17 

c.  Spinoza . 20 

d.  Leibniz . 23 

e.  Wolff  . 26 

III.  The  British  Non-Hedonists  . 30 

A.  Attempts  to  Save  Morality  by  Widening  the  Conception  of 

Pleasure . 33 

a.  Shaftesbury . 33 

b.  Hutcheson . 35 

c.  Hartley . 38 

d.  Hume . 40 

e.  Adam  Smith  . . 42 

B.  Systems  Revealing  an  Increasing  Divergence  between  Morality 

and  Pleasure,  and  a  Gradual  Repudiation  of  Pleasure  as  Exclu¬ 
sive  Motive .  43 

A.  Butler . 43 

b.  Price  . 45 

c.  Reid . 47 

d.  Dugald  Stewart . 48 

e.  Thomas  Brown . 49 

f.  Later  Intuitionists . 51 

IV.  Modified  Perfectionism . 53 

a.  Mendelssohn . 53 

b.  Tetens  and  Schmidt . 55 

V.  Kant . 57 

a.  The  Early  Rationalistic  Period . 57 

b.  The  Period  of  English  Influence . 58 

c.  From  the  Inaugural  Dissertation  to  the  Critique  of  Pure 

Reason . 60 

d  The  Ethical  System  in  its  Final  Form . 64 

5 


6 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


PAGE 

VI.  Several  Nineteenth-Century  Non-Hedonists . 72 

a.  Fichte  and  Hegel . 73 

b.  Schopenhauer  . 79 

c.  Herbart  . 81 

d.  Lotze . 82 

e.  Green . 85 

f.  Nietzsche . 89 

VII.  Conclusion . 92 


t 


I.  INTRODUCTION 


During  the  Middle  Ages  such  a  question  as  what  significance  should 
be  attributed  to  pleasure  in  a  moral  system  could  hardly  have  arisen. 
We  may  distinguish  a  kind  of  feeling  and  happiness  in  the  ecstasy  of  the 
Mystics;  but  pleasure  in  the  modern  sense  of  the  term  could  hardly  have 
been  regarded  as  of  much  moral  value,  even  if  it  were  not  reprobated  as 
indissolubly  bound  up  with  the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil. 

In  modern  times,  however,  the  situation  has  been  quite  different. 
A  considerable  proportion  of  the  leading  ethical  systems  have  frankly 
made  pleasure  the  necessary  motive  to  moral  action,  and  many  also  have 
gone  so  far  as  to  make  it  also  the  criterion  of  moral  values,  and  to  declare 
that  no  action  is  of  moral  significance  except  so  far  as  it  furnishes  pleasure 
to  a  sentient  being.  In  addition  to  the  ethical  writers  who  thus  are  to 
be  classed  as  hedonists,  there  is  another  large  class  of  writers  who,  while 
refusing  to  make  pleasure  the  standard  of  morality,  nevertheless  seem 
aware  that  it  is  too  prominent  a  feature  of  our  conscious  life,  and  too 
intimately  connected  with  the  springs  to  action,  not  to  possess  some  sig¬ 
nificance. 

It  is  with  this  second  class  of  writers  that  we  have  to  do  here,  and  it 
will  be  the  effort  of  this  dissertation  to  show  that  pleasure — and,  as  arising 
out  of  pleasure  and  connected  with  it,  feeling  and  happiness — do  serve  a 
position  of  some  importance  in  their  thought,  to  a  much  larger  degree 
than  perhaps  is  generally  understood.  While,  naturally  enough,  most 
non-hedonistic  writers  discourse  at  greater  length  against  pleasure  and 
happiness  in  the  way  that  they  are  employed  by  the  hedonists,  than  they 
do  in  the  positive  employment  of  them  in  their  own  systems,  nevertheless 
they  do  make  use  of  them  in  a  very  explicit  way,  and  to  a  considerable 
extent.  In  other  cases  one  is  able  to  detect  a  large  implicit  recognition 
of  feeling  and  happiness  as  integral  features  of  moral  action. 

The  non-hedonistic  writers  here  to  be  considered  fall  into  three  prin¬ 
cipal  groups:  (1)  the  rationalistic  perfectionists;  (2)  the  British  moral 
sense  writers,  and  their  intuitionist  successors;  (3)  Kant,  and  some  of 
the  idealists  who  have  followed  him. 

The  ethical  conceptions  of  the  perfectionist  school  were  derived  by 
its  founder,  Descartes,  largely  from  ancient  sources — Aristotle,  the  Stoics, 
and  the  Epicureans  all  furnishing  contributions.  These  contributions 


7 


8 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


were  not  simply  stuck  together  into  a  crude  eclecticism,  but  molded  into 
an  integral  system.  Self-realization,  under  the  modified  form  of  perfection, 
became  the  moral  ideal,  virtue  was  the  practice  of  this  morality,  pleasure 
was  the  consciousness  of  successful  progress  in  its  attainment,  and  happi¬ 
ness  was  the  final  reward  associated  with  its  achievement.  For  a  time 
this  combination  seemed  to  work  with  entire  satisfaction;  but  later  a 
growing  sense  of  a  larger  moral  content,  upon  the  one  hand,  and  the  nar¬ 
rowing  of  the  content  which  could  be  included  within  the  conception  of 
perfection,  upon  the  other,  forced  a  divergence  that  could  not  be  overcome. 
Pleasure,  perfection,  and  duty  no  longer  could  be  regarded  as  coincident. 

Among  the  British  writers  the  development  was  similar,  but  more 
rapid.  Their  observation  was  not  limited  to  the  use  of  a  formal  conception 
and  a  mathematical  method.  Shaftesburv  laid  rather  more  emphasis 
upon  the  feeling  side  of  perfection  than  Descartes  had  done;  and  the 
greater  attention  to  the  feeling  side  of  morality  which  was  given  by  his 
successors  soon  disclosed  a  serious  divergence  between  its  demands  and 
those  of  duty.  At  first  the  attempt  was  made  to  overcome  this  by  widen¬ 
ing  the  conception  of  pleasure  so  as  to  include  the  pleasures  of  the  moral 
sense,  and  of  sympathy;  but  after  Butler  the  coincidence  was  usually 
not  regarded  as  immediate,  and  arguments  were  devised  to  minimize  the 
divergence  as  much  as  possible,  and  postulate  an  ultimate  reconciliation 
in  a  future  life. 

Kant  inherited  from  his  perfectionist  predecessors  the  desire  for  a 
rational  principle  of  morality,  while  at  the  same  time  his  predecessors 
in  England  awakened  him  to  the  prominence  of  pleasure  and  feeling  in 
action,  and  to  their  worth  as  moral  content.  After  failing  to  find  a  rational 
principle  in  pleasure  on  account  of  its  contingent  and  empirical  nature, 
he  was  forced  to  abandon  its  employment  as  a  moral  criterion,  but  he 
continued  to  allot  to  it  such  a  part  of  the  ground  which  it  had  previously 
occupied  in  his  thought  as  more  important  claims  did  not  preclude.  The 
successors  of  Kant  occupied  various  attitudes.  Fichte,  Hegel,  and  T.  H. 
Green  continued  to  regard  pleasure  as  contingent  and  empirical,  but 
still  as  possessing  certain  functional  significance  in  moral  action.  Scho¬ 
penhauer  derived  pessimistic  conclusions  from  the  failure  to  find  ad¬ 
equate  rational  principles  in  pleasure.  Schopenhauer,  Flerbart,  and  Lotze 
discovered  a  significance  for  morals  in  the  pleasures  of  aesthetic  contem¬ 
plation.  Last  of  all,  Nietzsche  found  a  certain  functional  significance  in 
pleasure,  as  representing  a  primitive  form  of  moral  judgment. 


II.  THE  PERFECTIONISTS 


PLEASURE,  FEELING,  AND  HAPPINESS  DEFINED  IN  TERMS  OF 

PERFECTION 

The  men  of  the  Renaissance  were  in  search  of  a  wider,  fuller  life. 
They  wished  to  enjoy  all  of  the  good  things  of  this  world.  Pleasure,  of 
course,  seemed  to  be  one  of  these  good  things,  and  so  it  had  to  be  related 
in  some  way  to  the  highest  good.  They  also  wished  to  avail  themselves 
of  all  the  best  things  in  ancient  philosophy.  Descartes  accordingly 
snatched  upon  the  Aristotelian  conception  of  self-realization,  combined 
with  it  the  Stoic  conception  of  virtue,  and  made  the  union  of  the  two, 
which  he  called  “ perfection,”  coincident  with  Epicurean  pleasure  and 
happiness,  rightly  understood.  Malebranche  went  on  to  develop  more 
fully  the  religious  side  of  the  doctrine.  Thus  there  was  at  the  outset  a 
tendency  to  comprehend  as  much  as  possible  under  the  conceptions  of 
perfection  and  happiness. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  new  method  introduced  by  Descartes  finally 
tended  to  narrow  the  bounds  of  moral  activity.  Nothing  could  be  moral, 
which  could  not  be  deduced  from  the  concept  of  perfection.  As  the  mathe¬ 
matical  method  became  applied  more  rigidly,  the  contents  of  perfection 
became  more  limited,  and  only  those  pleasures  could  still  be  regarded 
as  moral  which  could  be  included  within  these  contents.  As  happiness 
continued  to  be  identified  with  perfection,  only  certain  classes  of  pleasures 
could  be  included  within  it.  Furthermore,  as  the  interests  of  the  school 
were  intellectual  rather  than  practical,  the  cognitive  aspects  of  pleasure 
received  their  attention,  rather  than  its  real  nature  as  affection. 

To  the  whole  school,  perfection  is  the  summum  bonum.  Happiness 
is  the  reward  which  leads  us  to  seek  perfection,  and  so  is  extremely  closely 
connected  with  it.  The  general  tendency — and  it  is  a  strong  one — is 
to  define  both  happiness  and  pleasure  in  what  seem  to  us  purely  cognitive 
terms.  As  their  psychology  did  not  know  our  modern  tripartite  and 
bipartite  divisions,  their  happiness  and  pleasure  had  volitional  char¬ 
acteristics,  as  well  as  the  affective  characteristics  which  we  attribute  to 
them;  but  their  chief  interest  and  attention  were  almost  wholly  devoted 
to  ascertaining  the  function,  and  determining  the  value  for  moral  action, 
of  the  cognitive  elements  which  they  attributed  to  pleasure. 

Happiness  is  “the  consciousness  of  all  the  perfection  of  which  we  are 


9 


IO 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


capable.”1  It  is  consciousness  of  perfection  as  a  whole ,  and  is  perma¬ 
nent.  Pleasure  is  consciousness  of  a  perfection;  it  is  finite ,  particular , 
transient.2  In  one  sense  happiness  and  pleasure  do  not  represent  a  funda¬ 
mental  opposition  in  the  judgment  of  the  school.  Both  are  endeavors 
to  appraise  and  evaluate  the  perfection  which  one  experiences.  Pleasure 
represents  a  more  quickly  formed  judgment,  and  is  functionally  useful 
because  we  cannot  always  stop  and  deliberate.  However,  on  account  of 
its  hastiness,  and  consequent  lack  of  clear  and  comprehensive  insight, 
it  is  liable  to  error. 

While  both  pleasure  and  happiness  are  consciousness  of  perfection, 
happiness  is  not  a  sum  of  pleasures.  It  is  due  to  an  independent  intellectual 
process,  resulting  in  consciousness  of  a  perfect  adjustment  of  all  the  fac¬ 
ulties  working  under  the  government  of  the  reason.3  Some  of  the  school 
regard  happiness  as  a  state  of  absolute ,  eternal  perfection;  others,  as  one 
of  constant  progress  in  the  attainment  of  new  and  higher  perfections; 
all,  as  the  incitement  to,  and  reward  of,  moral  effort,  and  to  all  it  is  mainly 
a  personal ,  individualistic  acquisition,  with  little  content  of  a  social  char¬ 
acter. 

The  school  also  differ  as  regards  the  extent  of  pleasure,  some  recog¬ 
nizing  intellectual  pleasure,  while  others  do  not  seem  to  do  so.  This 
depends  largely  upon  the  rigidity  with  which  the  mathematical  method 
is  employed.  All  regard  the  emotional  side  of  our  nature  as  cognitive 
in  character,  and  as  quicker,  but  less  accurate,  in  its  perceptions  than 
the  reason.  Consequently,  those  who  use  the  mathematical  method 
most  closely  have  to  confine  their  attention  to  this  cognitive  aspect  of 
feeling.  Hence  Wolff  wholly  (and  Spinoza  mainly)  limits  pleasure  to 
this  hasty,  and  hence  confused,  cognition  of  perfection.  Spinoza  expects 
pleasure  to  disappear  in  clear  thought;  Wolff  recognizes  its  utility  as  a 
good  servant  kept  in  subordination  to  the  reason.  Descartes,  Malebranche, 
and  Leibniz,  on  the  other  hand,  recognized  intellectual  pleasure  attend¬ 
ing  the  operations  of  the  reason  itself.  For  them  reason  also  plays  an  im¬ 
portant  function  in  discerning  the  actual  amount  of  perfection  represented 
by  the  different  forms  of  pleasure,  and  directs  action  so  as  to  obtain  the 
most  perfection  (and  consequently  the  most  pleasure)  possible.  To 
Spinoza  and  Wolff  pleasure  is  confused  thought;  to  Descartes  we  expe¬ 
rience,  as  a  result  of  the  action  of  the  passions,  a  false  notion  of  both 

1  Beatitudo,  la  beatitude,  Gliickseligkeity  or  Seligkeit . 

2  Laetitia,  la  plaisir;  with  Wolff,  voluptas,  Lust. 

3  This  statement  does  not  wholly  apply  to  Spinoza,  who  has  no  place  for  the 
lower  faculties  in  his  beatitudo. 


THE  PERFECTIONISTS 


1 1 

the  pleasure  and  the  perfection  experienced;  and  reason,  in  leading  us 
to  estimate  perfection  correctly,  leads  us  to  estimate  pleasure  correctly 
also.  To  the  former  pleasure  is  always  confused  consciousness  of  per¬ 
fection;  to  the  latter  it  is  sometimes  clear  and  distinct  consciousness  of 
perfection  as  well.  Malebranche  supplements  Descartes’  statement  by 
making  a  clear  and  distinct  perception  of  perfection  and  pleasure  consist 
in  the  recognition  of  God  as  efficient  cause  of  the  perception;  while  a 
confused  perception  is  one  in  which  this  causality  is  not  recognized. 

The  perfectionists  hit  upon  three  psychological  points  in  respect  to 
pleasure  which  were  of  importance  in  the  development  of  their  systems: 
(i)  that  novelty  is  of  importance  in  it;  (2)  that  it  is  more  intense  when 
attended  by  emotional  excitement;  (3)  that  it  owes  its  origin  in  some 
way  to  external  stimulation,  or  to  images,  or  to  something  that  is  in  some 
way  extrinsic  to  the  pleasure  itself. 

1.  It  is  very  evident  to  anyone  that  our  enjoyment,  in  most  things 
at  least,  wears  away  with  familiarity.  What  at  first  afforded  keen  enjoy¬ 
ment  is  experienced  with  indifference,  and  finally  becomes  disagreeable. 
The  modern  theory  is  that  it  is  the  function  of  pleasure  to  excite  us  to 
action  in  novel  situations,  and  this  necessity  is  no  longer  present  when 
the  action  necessary  has  become  well  known  and  tends  to  the  habitual. 
The  perfectionists  were  quite  aware  of  this  characteristic  of  pleasure, 
and  derived  important  conclusions  from  it.  Descartes,  Leibniz,  and 
Wolff  include  pleasure  in  the  state  of  happiness,  since  to  them  happiness 
is  a  state  of  progress  and  activity,  and  is  situated  within  the  temporal 
order.  The  progress  must  be  so  rapid  that  before  old  pleasures  begin  to 
pall,  new  ones  shall  always  have  been  acquired.  Thus  the  search  for 
pleasure  becomes  a  positive  incitement  to  moral  progress.  The  new 
pleasures  acquired  of  course  always  represent  higher  stages  of  perfection 
than  the  ones  which  preceded  them.  A  transition  to  a  lower  state  of 
perfection  would  be  accompanied  by  pain.  Spinoza  attributes  the  same 
function  to  pleasure  and  pain.  They  define  the  content  of  desire  in  any 
given  experience,  and  thus  direct  the  conatus  sui  perservarandi  along 
the  line  of  moral  progress.  But  Spinoza  does  not  conceive  of  happiness 
as  something  to  be  attained  within  the  temporal  order.  Consequently, 
while  the  impetus  of  pleasure  with  him,  as  with  the  others,  is  in  the  direc¬ 
tion  of  moral  progress,  he  attempts,  though  not  with  entire  success,  to 
exclude  it  from  the  final  state  of  eternal  perfection. 

2.  It  is  also  an  unquestioned  fact  that  intense  pleasure  is  accompanied 
by  strong  emotional  content,  and  that  at  such  times  our  reasoning  faculties 
are  not,  to  say  the  least,  at  their  best.  We  reason  best  when  we  are  cool 


12 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


and  deliberate,  and  are  not  strongly  aware  of  any  particular  pleasure  or 
pain,  but  are  simply  in  a  state  of  comfort,  free  from  disturbing  elements 
of  all  kinds,  pleasant  and  unpleasant,  bodily  and  mental.  For  clearness 
of  thought,  then,  we  wish  a  minimum  of  pleasure  and  pain.  On  the  other 
hand,  when  we  are  experiencing  considerable  pleasure  or  pain,  our  thoughts 
are  confused ;  and  we  cannot  carry  on  any  lengthy  and  connected  thought, 
to  say  the  least,  under  such  circumstances. 

These  facts  naturally  led  a  school  who  regarded  pleasure  as  a  form 
of  cognition  to  regard  it  as  confused  thought.  We  can  readily  see  the 
psychology  that  lies  back  of  Spinoza’s  regarding  the  state  of  perfection 
as  devoid  of  pleasure  altogether,  or,  at  least,  as  attended  only  by  “calm 
acquiescence,”  and  other  like  terms  which  seem  to  suggest  a  state  of 
physical  and  mental  comfort,  quite  free  from  any  very  strong  affective 
content.  The  happiness  which  attends  a  state  of  intellectual  perfection 
had  to  be  free  from  pleasure  altogether,  unless  pleasure  should  be  con¬ 
ceived  of  as  having  qualitative  distinctions.  And  this  is  of  course  what 
Descartes  and  Malebranche  try  to  do — make  qualitative  distinctions  in 
pleasure — when  they  have  pleasures  of  purely  intellectual  origin,  and 
those  which,  though  also  psychical,  are  due  to  the  stimulation  of  the  mind 
by  the  animal  spirits. 

3.  While  we  read  in  works  of  fiction  of  people  exuberant  with  “the 
joys  of  mere  living,”  “feeling  how  good  it  is  just  to  be  alive,”  all  will 
agree  that  the  great  bulk  of  pleasure  experienced  is  due  to  some  extrinsic 
cause  or  other.  It  may  be  that  the  pleasure  is  caused  by  a  beautiful 
painting  or  some  sublime  music;  it  may  be  due  to  a  good  cigar  or  a  box 
of  chocolate  creams;  or,  indeed,  to  the  sight  of  a  brave  or  generous  action. 
Again,  it  may  be  caused  by  an  image  of  some  past  event  that  arises  in  the 
mind;  or  it  may  be  due  to  egotistical  self-congratulation  on  some  fine 
quality  which  we  fancy  that  we  possess.  In  any  case,  it  has  a  definite 
extrinsic  cause,  external  to  the  pleasure  itself,  and  this  is  some  form  of 
cognitive  content.  The  affective  tone  is  referred  to  some  definite  sensa¬ 
tion  or  image  as  its  cause. 

Now,  if  we  accept  the  definition  of  pleasure  as  a  sense  of  some  per¬ 
fection,  it  seems  to  follow  from  the  examples  cited  in  the  preceding  para¬ 
graph,  that  the  “perfection”  may  be  of  a  personal  character.  One  may 
derive  pleasure  from  the  consciousness  of  one’s  own  powers,  or  the  per¬ 
fection  may  be  due  to  an  external  object,  and  have  nothing  to  do  with 
one’s  own  perfection  at  all.  At  least  this  is  the  wav  the  matter  appeared 
to  Wolff.  The  writers  previous  to  Leibniz  did  not  consider  the  question 
whether  perfection  had  to  be  one’s  own  to  produce  pleasure.  It  is  probable 


THE  PERFECTIONISTS 


13 


that  they  had  the  Aristotelian  definition  in  mind,1  and  by  “consciousness 
of  perfection,”  so  far  as  they  had  thought  the  matter  out,  they  meant 
the  conscious  exercise  of  one’s  capacities  in  the  way  for  which  they  are 
fitted.  However,  their  ambiguity  led  Wolff,  justifiably  enough,  to  derive 
the  other  view  from  them.  The  inadequacy  for  psychological  purposes 
of  such  a  view  as  that  advanced  by  Wolff  has  been  pointed  out  very 
forcibly  by  Hamilton.  It  is  equally  barren  for  ethical  purposes.  How 
pleasure  can  possibly  be  a  guide  to  moral  conduct  in  any  way  if  it  is  incited 
quite  as  much  by  external  objects  which  have  no  obvious  ethical  relation¬ 
ship  to  one,  as  by  one’s  own  moral  perfections  (and,  in  the  case  of  pain, 
by  one’s  own  moral  imperfections),  it  is  hard  to  see. 

With  all  the  school  a  perfect  parallel  between  happiness  and  perfection 
is  assumed.  Happiness  is  the  state  of  consciousness  that  accompanies 
perfection.  This  agreeable  feeling  needs  not  to  be  present  all  of  the  time? 
but  whenever  one  thinks  of  one’s  perfection  it  should  be  present.  No 
difficulty  about  the  perfect  identity  between  happiness  and  the  conscious¬ 
ness  of  perfection  seems  to  have  been  raised.  Upon  the  relationship  of 
happiness  and  pleasure,  and  of  pleasure  to  the  emotions,  there  was  some 
difference  of  opinion.  To  all  of  the  school,  however,  the  state  of  perfection 
involved,  as  one  of  its  main  characteristics,  clearness  of  insight.  Rational 
judgments,  clear  and  distinct  thoughts,  were  exceedingly  prominent  in 
the  beatific  vision  of  every  rationalist. 

A.  DESCARTES 

Descartes  describes  pleasure  as  the  “feeling  or  sense  of  some  per¬ 
fection.”  Pleasure  and  pain  are  not  very  closely  defined.  As  synony¬ 
mous  with  “pleasant,”  we  have  such  words  as  “agreeable”  and  “useful” 
(convenable)  and  even  bien.  Chatouillement  seems  sometimes  to  mean 
sensual  pleasure,  and  sometimes  the  cause  of  it.2  It  is  associated  with 
two  of  the  passions,  la  joie  and  V amour — or  rather  is  their  cause,  it  is 
perhaps  better  to  say — and  furnishes  the  impulse  to  desire.  Pain,  in  like 
manner,  is  associated  with  la  tristesse  and  la  haine,  and  furnishes  the 
impulse  to  desire  in  the  negative  sense. 

Descartes  distinguishes  three  different  types  of  pleasure:  (1)  an  initial 
feeling  {sentiment),  upon  the  presence  of  which  joy  and  desire  follow, 
due  to  external  stimulation;  (2)  an  agreeable  passion  =  joy;  (3)  a  purely 

1  Cf.,  Sir  William  Hamilton,  Lectures  on  Metaphysics ,  II,  461  f. 

2  Cf.,  e.  g.,  Passions,  XCIV.  The  Passions  is  cited  by  the  section  numbers  in 
Roman  numerals;  the  correspondence  is  cited  from  the  edition  of  Victor  Cousin 
(  =  C.)  and  Adam  and  Tannery  (=A.  &  T.). 


14 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


psychical  experience  which  the  mind  has  independently  of  the  body.  It 
is  with  the  last  two,  of  course,  that  we  are  mainly  concerned  in  the  study 
of  ethics. 

The  passions  are  distinctly  psychical  states,  but  are  due  to  the  action 
of  the  body  upon  the  mind.  In  Descartes’  physiological  account  the 
animal  spirits,  which  pass  through  the  nerves,  are  supposed  to  impinge 
upon  the  pineal  gland,  or  conarium,  the  principal  seat  of  the  soul;  and, 
in  consequence  of  this  agitation  from  without,  the  various  passions  are 
experienced  in  the  soul.  Since  the  passions  are  due  to  the  violent  stimu¬ 
lation  of  the  animal  spirits,  and  the  mind  in  experiencing  them  is  liable 
not  to  be  working  in  an  orderly  manner,  the  passions  are  confused  ideas 
in  the  mind.1  For  the  same  reason,  the  real  amount  of  pleasure  contained 
in  a  passion  is  liable  to  be  vastly  exaggerated.  Moreover,  since  this  pleas¬ 
ure  is  at  best  due  only  to  bodily  perfection,  which  is  temporary  in  character, 
these  bodily  pleasures  must  be  submitted  to  the  scrutiny  of  the  reason, 
in  order  not  to  become  rated  too  highly. 

Passions,  however,  though  liable  to  be  overrated,  do  have  a  value. 
They  are  all  good  in  their  nature ;  the  only  thing  that  we  need  fear  is  their 
wrong  use  or  excess.2  Indeed,  in  the  concluding  section  of  the  Passions 
he  seems  to  allot  to  them  a  larger  part  of  the  pleasure  of  life  than  in  other 
passages  in  his  works.  Here  he  says  that,  while  the  mind  has  pleasures 
of  its  own  apart  from  the  body,  yet  most  of  the  pleasures  of  this  life  are 
due  to  them,  and  most  of  the  pains  as  well.  So  that  the  function  of  the 
reason  is  so  to  direct  them  as  to  obtain  the  most  pleasure  that  can  be 
derived  from  them. 

Opposed  to  the  passions,  however,  in  being  much  more  permanent, 
and  more  clearly  perceived,  are  the  pleasures  of  the  mind  itself.  The 
mind  is  secure  in  the  possession  of  these.  Under  this  head,  apparently, 
would  come  most  of  those  pleasures  which  the  English  school,  quoting 
Addison,  call  “pleasures  of  the  imagination,”  and  all  pleasures  due  to 
the  action  of  the  mind  itself,  not  directly  dependent  upon  sense  stimula¬ 
tion.  Thus,  in  the  letter  to  the  queen  of  Sweden3  he  declares  that  the 
exercise  of  our  free  will — which  is  purely  a  mental  act  with  Descartes — 
affords  “a  pleasure  beyond  comparison  more  sweet,  more  lasting,  and 
substantial  than  all  that  come  from  any  other  source.” 

1  C.,  X,  5,  63;  A.  &  T.,  IV,  602  f.;  V,  85;  Principes,  §  190  (A.  &  T.,  IX,  31 1  f.). 

2  Passions,  CCXI. 

3  Quoted  from  The  Philosophy  0}  Descartes,  by  H.  A.  P.  Torrey;  cf.  also  Pas¬ 
sions,  CXLVII,  CXLVIII;  C.,  IX,  214,  234;  A.  &  T.,  IV,  267,  294;  C.,  IX,  371- 
78;  A.  &  T.,  IV,  351-57. 


THE  PERFECTIONISTS 


15 


Happiness  ( beatitude )  consists  of  the  conscious  possession  of  all  the 
perfection  of  which  we  are  capable.  This  is  mainly  to  be  found  in  intel¬ 
lectual  pleasures.  He  is,  however,  by  no  means  a  hedonist,  even  of  a 
highly  intellectual  type,  for  he  takes  great  pains  to  explain  that  he  does 
not  regard  happiness  as  the  highest  good,  though  he  says  that  it  is  very 
closely  connected  with  it,  and  is  the 

contentment  or  satisfaction  of  mind  which  results  from  its  possession.  By  the 
end  of  our  action  we  must  understand  both;  for  the  highest  good  is  undoubtedly 
that  which  we  ought  to  propose  to  ourselves  as  the  end  in  all  our  actions;  and 
the  contentment  of  mind  which  springs  from  it,  being  the  attraction  which  makes 
us  seek  it,  is  also  with  good  reason  called  our  end.1 

The  supreme  good  is  therefore  virtue ,  the  possession  of  all  the  good 
(i.  e.,  perfection)  of  which  we  are  capable.2  The  inducement  to  seek 
this  is  beatitude ,  and  possession  of  the  highest  good  involves  this  also. 
Virtue  alone  is  sufficient  to  make  us  happy  in  this  life.3  One  should,  of 
course,  by  means  of  the  reason,  carefully  evaluate  all  the  different  pleasures 
suggested  by  the  passions,  and  desire  to  obtain  them  so  far  as  he  is  able 
to  get  them.  Reason  teaches  us  that  the  sine  qua  non  for  happiness  is 
calmness  and  acquiescence  of  mind,  and  that  in  this  alone,  and  in  the 
intellectual  pleasures  obtainable  by  everyone,  true  happiness  may  be 
found,  quite  independently  of  any  physical  pleasures;  nay,  even  our 
pains  upon  the  physical  and  passionate  side  may  afford  us  intellectual 
pleasure  in  the  mind  itself.4 

To  obtain  beatitude  three  things  are  necessary:  (1)  to  use  the  mind 
in  the  best  way  possible  to  find  out  what  ought  to  be  done;  (2)  to  carry 
out  everything  that  reason  dictates  regardless  of  passions  and  appetites; 
(3)  to  desire  nothing  beyond  one’s  own  capacities.  The  last  two  pre¬ 
scriptions,  Descartes  thought,  are  really  involved  in  the  first  one.  If  one 
clearly  sees  what  he  ought  to  do,  he  will  do  it.  This,  of  course,  follows 
upon  his  treatment  of  the  passions  as  confused  ideas;  if  they  are  clearly 
perceived  by  the  reason  and  given  their  true  value,  one  will  not  be  tempted 
to  act  upon  them  at  the  wrong  time,  since  he  will  also  behold  the  greater 
attractiveness  in  beatitude ,  which  accompanies  virtue.  And  if  one  per- 

1  Torrey,  op.  cit.,  332  f.;  C.,  IX,  219;  A.  &  T.,  IV,  275;  cf.  also  C.,  IX,  237; 
A.  &  T.,  305. 

^  C.,  IX,  225  f.;  X,  60  f.;  A.  &  T.,  IV,  283  f.;  V,  81  ff. 

3  C.,  IX,  214;  A.  &  T.,  IV  266  f. 

4  Passions,  CXLVII,  gives  an  instance  of  this  of  a  rather  low  sort;  while  C., 
IX,  231-34  (A.  &  T.,  IV,  292-94),  shows  this  by  pointing  out  the  transcendent  social 
and  religious  pleasures. 


i6 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


ceives  that  something  is  beyond  one’s  power  to  obtain,  one  will  not 
desire  it.1 

Descartes  recognizes  a  much  larger  social  content  in  his  happiness 
than  any  of  his  perfectionist  successors,  except  perhaps  Malebranche. 
Love  is  a  large  source  of  pleasure  to  us ;  and  in  his  idea  of  love  we  identify 
ourselves  with  the  beloved  object  in  a  way  that  almost  seems  to  suggest 
some  of  our  modern  ideas  of  the  social  self.  Love  causes  us  to  regard 
ourselves  and  the  objects  of  our  affection  as  a  whole  of  which  we  are  only 
a  part — sometimes  much  the  less  important  part.  If  this  object  is  some¬ 
thing  which  one  considers  less  important  than  one’s  self,  like  a  flower  or 
a  bird,  one  would  not  make  great  sacrifices  for  it;  but  if  one  thinks  of  it 
as  vastly  more  important — as  one’s  prince  or  one’s  country,  for  example — 
one  would  not  hesitate  to  give  up  one’s  life  for  its  sake.2  Greatest  of  all 
is  our  love  for  God.  Regarding  him  as  the  source  of  all  perfection,  and 
loving  him  as  such,  one  would  not  hesitate  to  abandon  all  to  his  will,  and 
have  no  other  passion  than  to  do  what  is  agreeable  to  him;3  from  this 
we  shall  get  a  satisfaction  of  mind  vastly  superior  to  the  pleasures  of  the 
senses.  This  love  of  God  with  Descartes  is  of  a  distinctly  affective  char¬ 
acter,  and  is  active. 

The  distinction  between  the  cognitive  and  affective  processes,  upon 
which  modern  psychology  lays  so  much  emphasis,  Descartes  did  not 
have  very  clearly  in  mind.  The  distinction  which  most  concerned  Des¬ 
cartes  was  that  which  he  made  between  the  action  of  the  mind  independ¬ 
ently  of  the  body,  and  that  occasioned  by  the  body.  For  this  reason  we 
must  not  press  the  charge  of  reducing  pleasure  and  emotion  to  cognitive 
terms  too  strongly  with  reference  to  Descartes.  The  tendency  of  the 
mathematical  method  was  clearly  in  that  direction;  but  Descartes’  emo¬ 
tions  of  the  soul  seem  to  be  as  genuine  a  part  of  reality  as  any  other  intel¬ 
lectual  content.  It  is  only  the  passions,  due  to  the  action  of  the  body, 
which  are  confused.  And  so  long  as  the  mathematical  method  was  used 
only  in  the  manner  of  Descartes,  the  tendency  to  reduce  feeling  to  intellect 
was  in  no  danger  of  reaching  the  absurd  lengths  which  we  shall  discover 
in  the  case  of  Spinoza. 

In  Descartes’  position  we  find  the  main  points  of  the  perfectionist 
position  stated  in  their  original  form.  Pleasure  is  the  consciousness  of 
some  perfection.  It  is  always  psychical,  and  is  due  either  to  bodily  or 

1  C.,  IX,  212  f.;  A.  &  T.,  265  f.;  cf.  Professor  Max  Heinze,  Die  Sittenlehre  des 
Descartes,  15  f. 

2  C.,  X,  15  f.;  A.  &  T.,  V,  611  f. 

3  C.,  IX,  234;  A.  &  T.,  IV,  294. 


THE  PERFECTIONISTS 


17 


to  purely  intellectual  origin.  It  furnishes  the  initial  spring  to  action. 
Happiness  is  composed  of  pleasures,  and  is  at  the  same  time  due  to  the 
consciousness  of  the  possession  of  all  the  perfection  of  which  we  are 
capable.  Happiness  and  virtue  are  so  closely  related  that  it  is  scarcely 
necessary  to  distinguish  between  them,  both  being  concerned  with  per¬ 
fection.  The  difficulties  involved  in  the  combination  of  pleasure,  happi¬ 
ness,  and  virtue  under  the  conception  of  perfection  have  not  yet  become 
apparent.  While  the  passions  are  regarded  as  confused  thought,  the 
mathematical  method  has  not  been  developed  far  enough  to  lead  to  the 
classification  of  all  feeling  in  this  manner,  nor  to  lead  to  a  narrowing  of 
the  social  content  in  morality.1 

B.  MALEBRATS  CHE 

The  philosophy  of  Malebranche  as  a  whole  represents  an  attempt, 
not  only  to  bring  Cartesianism  into  full  harmony  with  the  Roman  Catholic 
faith  but  to  cause  it  to  afford  a  satisfactory  philosophical  statement  of 
the  doctrines  of  the  church  and  thus  take  the  place  of  scholasticism.  As 
a  devout  Christian,  Malebranche  wished  to  make  his  philosophical  beliefs 
serviceable  in  the  expression  and  interpretation  of  religion.  His  treat¬ 
ment  of  pleasure  and  pain  is  actuated  by  this  motive. 

God  is  the  efficient  cause  of  everything  which  comes  to  pass.  He  is 
therefore  the  cause  of  our  sensations  and  feelings.  He  has  implanted 
within  us  a  desire  for  pleasure  and  an  aversion  to  pain.  This  is  in  order 
that  we  may  seek  what  is  good,  and  avoid  what  is  evil.  He  goes  on  to 
identify  pleasure  with  the  good,  and  pain  with  the  evil.2  Pleasure  and 
pain  are  thus  the  immediate  springs  to  action,  and  also  enable  us  to  dis¬ 
tinguish  good  from  evil. 

Thus  far,  Malebranche  seems  to  be  a  thoroughgoing  hedonist.  The 
difference,  however,  is  not  far  to  seek.  Perfection  is  the  summnm  bonum. 
To  have  perfection  is  to  share  in  universal  order.  It  is  in  order  that  we 

1  The  question  is  sometimes  raised  as  to  whether  we  are  to  accept  Descartes’ 
ethical  statements  at  their  face  value,  or  whether  they  are  to  be  thought  of  as  written 
mainly  to  please  the  distinguished  ladies  to  whom  they  are  addressed,  and  as  con¬ 
cealing  his  real  thought  rather  than  expressing  it.  It  must  be  admitted  that  Des¬ 
cartes  was  a  rare  artist  at  paying  compliments;  but  his  ethical  presentation  seems  to 
the  present  writer  quite  in  general  agreement  with  his  philosophy  as  a  whole,  so  far 
as  he  has  developed  it.  His  desire  that  his  letters  on  ethics  should  be  read  only  by 
those  to  whom  they  were  addressed  is  hardly  an  indication  that  he  was  concealing 
his  real  thought  in  them,  but  exactly  the  opposite.  He  was  expressing  himself  frankly 
upon  a  field  that  he  felt  to  be  delicate,  and  he  did  not  care  that  his  enemies  should 
see  what  he  had  written. 

2  Recherche  de  la  verite,  II,  79. 


i8 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


may  obtain  this  that  God  has  given  us  pleasures  and  pains.  So  pleasures 
and  pains  are  not  of  value  merely  as  such,  but  because  through  them  we 
discern  and  desire  perfection.  In  order  to  lead  us  to  desire  to  share  in 
this  order,  God  has  given  us  certain  tendencies,  all  of  which,  when  suc¬ 
cessful,  produce  in  us  feelings  of  pleasure.  These  are:  (i)  curiosity; 
(2)  self-love;  (3)  benevolence.1  Self-love  divides  itself  into  two  parts — 
the  love  of  one’s  enlargement  or  perfection,  and  the  love  of  pleasure  and 
happiness.  The  two  should  be  in  harmony.  The  contemplation  of  per¬ 
fection  evokes  a  pleasurable  response.  The  blessed  love  divine  perfec¬ 
tions,  God  as  he  is,  because  the  view  of  these  perfections  pleases  them. 
“For,  man  having  been  made  to  know  and  love  God,  it  is  necessary  that 
the  sight  of  all  that  is  perfect  affords  pleasure  to  us.  ”2  Besides  these 
natural  inclinations,  we  also  have  passions,  which  are  also  instruments 
to  prompt  us  in  the  right  direction,  when  properly  employed.  To  the 
passions,  which  are  due  to  bodily  origin,  as  well  as  to  the  body  and  its 
pleasures  in  general,  Malebranche,  however,  does  not  make  as  liberal  con¬ 
cessions  as  Descartes.3 

The  naivete  of  Malebranche ’s  thought  is  evidenced  by  his  ability  to 
make  rational  self-love  and  benevolence  both  innate  springs  in  the  nature 
of  man,  and  yet  seemingly  feel  no  problem  as  to  their  reconciliation.  The 
fact  that  he  does  not  use  a  mathematical  mode  of  exposition  gave  him 
freer  play  than  others  of  the  school,  and  enabled  him  to  give  pleasure 
and  feeling  a  larger  part  in  perfection  than  he  otherwise  could  have 
done.  No  sharp  antithesis  between  pleasure  and  duty  could  arise  in  the 
mind  of  a  man  who  regarded  the  consciousness  of  both  to  be  due  to  the 
direct  and  immediate  activity  of  God !  His  free  mode  of  exposition  and 
wide  sympathies  give  him  a  wider  vision  and  a  deeper  recognition  of 
the  claims  of  pleasure,  feeling,  and  happiness  than  any  other  of  his 
school.  In  freely  recognizing  the  worth  of  both  physical  and  intellectual 
pleasures,  and  in  making  pleasure  the  spring  to  action  and  a  factor  in  the 
discernment  of  good  and  evil,  as  well  as  in  his  recognition  of  the  pleas¬ 
ures  of  both  self-love  and  benevolence,  this  comprehensiveness  is  evidenced. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  failed  to  appreciate  the  difficulties  that  a  recognition 
of  these  elements  elicits,  probably  on  account  of  the  inevitable  obscurantism 
which  seems  ever  to  be  the  fate  of  philosophy  when  it  is  employed  as  an 
instrument  for  the  statement  and  expression  of  religious  doctrines. 

Failure  to  choose  good  and  do  right,  and  thus  attain  perfection,  is  not, 
however,  due  to  wrong  feelings,  but  to  lack  of  intellectual  discernment. 

1  Recherche  de  la  verite,  II,  Book  IV.  2  Ibid.,  II,  40. 

3  Henri  Joly,  Malebranche,  266  ff. 


THE  PERFECTIONISTS 


19 


This  occurs  when  we  fail  to  perceive  that  God  is  the  cause  of  our  pleasures, 
and  are  thus  led  to  seek  pleasure  as  something  immediately  obtainable 
by  us  upon  our  own  responsibility,  instead  of  being  something  for  which 
we  must  depend  upon  God.  Under  such  circumstances  self-love  becomes 
the  irreconcilable  enemy  of  perfection  and  virtue.1  Self-love,  the  desire 
to  be  happy,  is  characteristic  of  saints  and  sinners  alike;  the  difference 
simply  is  that  the  former  see  where  it  truly  lies,  while  the  latter  seek  after 
phantasms.2  A  peculiar  application  of  the  doctrine  of  occasionalism 
occurs  where  Malebranche  says  that  it  is  an  act  of  injustice  for  us  to  produce 
movements  in  the  body  which  force  God,  acting  according  to  the  universal 
laws  of  nature,  to  give  us  pleasures  where  they  are  not  consonant  with 
the  divine  order,  and  we  do  not  deserve  them.  Such  action  on  our  part 
must  inevitably  expose  us  ultimately  to  his  punishment.3 

Reason  is  the  guide  which  directs  us  in  the  search  of  true  pleasures 
and  leads  us  to  God.  It  is  reason  which  enables  us  to  “see  all  things  in 
God,”  as  their  efficient  cause  and  support.  In  the  discernment  of  perfec¬ 
tion,  both  reason  and  feelings  seem  to  co-operate.  Reason  discovers  the 
good  for  us,  and  pleasure  enables  us  to  recognize  it  as  such,  and  to  enjoy 
and  desire  it.4  Any  well-worked-out  account  of  the  functional  relationship 
between  thought  and  feeling  either  in  reasoning  or  in  volition  we,  of  course, 
cannot  find  in  Malebranche;  but  we  must  credit  him  with  considerable 
acuteness  in  perceiving  that  both  processes  in  some  way  involve  an  inti¬ 
mate  union  of  the  two. 

As  compared  with  Descartes,  Malebranche  makes  the  affective  side 
rather  more  prominent.  “Love”  is  a  word  which  he  is  constantly  using 
as  the  explanation  of  our  actions,  and  by  it  he  clearly  means  a  sentiment, 
and  not  something  so  devoid  of  feeling  as  Spinoza’s  “intellectual  love  of 
God.”  Both  Malebranche  and  Descartes,  of  course,  have  the  same 
general  attitude  toward  mind  and  body.  The  mind  is  more  perfect  than 
the  body,  and  shares  in  the  divine  perfection  to  at  least  a  larger  extent. 
Both  regard  the  passions  as  the  source  of  confused  ideas;  and  both  look 
to  the  reason  to  enable  us  to  avoid  the  mistakes  into  which  they  are  liable 
to  lead  us.  Both  adopt  the  same  psychological  and  physiological  expla¬ 
nation  for  this.  Descartes  makes  the  perfection  of  the  body  rather  a 
larger  content  of  perfection  as  a  whole  than  does  Malebranche,  as  has 
already  been  noted;  but  Malebranche  makes  love  and  the  more  refined 

1  Traite  de  morale,  30,  72.  2  Traite,  263. 

3  Recherche  de  la  verite,  II,  76;  cf.  also  Janet  and  Seailles,  History  0}  the  Prob¬ 
lems  0}  Philosophy,  English  trans.,  II,  289. 

4  Traite,  21  and  footnote  6,  45. 


20 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


spiritual  pleasures  much  more  prominent  in  his  account  than  does  Des¬ 
cartes.  He  recognizes  fully  as  large  a  social  content  in  morality  as  does 
Descartes,  and  has  an  explanation  for  this  in  making  benevolence  one 
of  the  fundamental  principles  of  our  nature.  He  is  also  less  friendly  to 
Stoicism  than  Descartes.1 

As  compared  with  Descartes,  we  find  Malebranche  equally  appre¬ 
ciative  of  the  moral  claims  of  our  fellow-men  upon  us.  To  Malebranche, 
however,  the  measure  of  moral  value  is  chiefly  religious.  He  distinguishes 
two  kinds  of  society:  a  society  devoted  to  the  attainment  of  transient 
and  perishable  goods,  and  one  “  governed  by  reason,  sustained  by  faith, 
subsisting  in  the  communion  of  true  goods,  whose  object  is  a  blessed  life 
for  eternity.”2  Beatitude  is  distinctly  social  in  its  nature.  The  heavenly 
Jerusalem  is  a  city,  and  its  joys  are  to  be  shared  with  the  saints  and  the 
blessed  Trinity.  Malebranche ’s  conception  of  “seeing  all  things  in  God” 
is  not  sufficiently  pantheistic  to  preclude  a  social  state  in  which  a  com¬ 
munity  of  free  spirits  are  united  in  mutual  love  with  one  another  and 
with  the  Deity. 

In  Malebranche ’s  presentation,  then,  we  have  largely  the  same  defi¬ 
nitions  of  pleasure  and  beatitude  as  in  Descartes.  These,  however,  are 
less  sensuous  and  more  intellectual  and  religious  in  their  nature.  Though 
widely  conscious  of  the  social  nature  of  happiness  and  duty,  Malebranche 
insists  upon  making  the  thought  of  a  future  state  of  eternal  blessedness 
the  final  standard  by  which  to  govern  ourselves  in  all  our  social  relation¬ 
ships. 

C.  SPINOZA 

Malebranche,  as  we  have  seen,  was  interested  in  securing  in  ration¬ 
alism  a  medium  for  the  expression  of  the  doctrines  of  his  church.  He 
also  seems  to  have  been  a  man  with  broad  sympathies,  and  was  ready  to 
allot  a  considerable  content  to  feeling  in  human  activity,  so  far  as  the 
method  of  his  treatment  admitted — and  he  did  not  adopt  a  rigidly  mathe¬ 
matical  mode  of  exposition.  It  is  in  Spinoza  that  we  find  the  mathemati¬ 
cal  method  carried  to  its  farthest  development.  In  his  case  rationalism 
was  the  first  interest:  he  had  no  religious  affiliations  which  were  dear 
to  him,  and,  as  a  member  of  a  despised  and  persecuted  race,  living  a  com¬ 
paratively  solitary  life,  it  is  not  strange  that  he  did  not  feel  so  strong  social 
sentiments;  so  neither  of  these  considerations  influenced  him  in  opposition 
to  the  general  tendency  of  the  school  to  reduce  all  the  contents  of  conscious¬ 
ness  to  cognitive  terms  and  to  deduce  their  conclusions  in  mathematical 
fashion. 

1  Recherche  de  la  verite,  Book  IV,  chap.  x. 


3  Traite ,  184. 


THE  PERFECTIONISTS 


21 


It  is  not  difficult  for  psychologists  to  unite  either  thought  or  feeling 
with  volition,  making  one  continuous  process  out  of  the  two,  provided  the 
remaining  factor  is  ignored.  It  is  when  the  attempt  is  made  to  fuse  all 
three  into  one  process  that  the  difficulties  arise.  Consequently,  Spinoza 
found  little  difficulty  in  proclaiming  that  “will  and  understanding  are  the 
same;”1  but,  as  we  shall  see,  it  was  not  so  easy  for  him  to  regard  feelings 
as  nothing  other  than  confused  thought. 

Pleasure  and  pain  have  to  arise  in  consciousness  as  peculiar  forms  of 
cognition.  Logically  deducible  from  the  definition  of  a  thing  is  its  conatus 
sui  perserverandi ,  its  endeavor  to  persist  in  its  own  being.  But  since  all 
finite  beings  have  this  endeavor,  and  at  the  same  time  are  finite,  and  not 
self-sufficient,  they  impinge  upon  one  another  in  the  assertion  of  their 
conatus,  and  each  is  necessarily  determined  at  times  in  its  action  by  causes 
lying  outside  of  its  own  essence,  and  is  passive.  Now,  perfection  for 
Spinoza  means  enlargement  or  persistence  in  one’s  own  being.2  Changes 
in  the  condition  of  our  conatus  attract  our  attention.  We  are  conscious 
of  an  increase  in  perfection  as  pleasure,  and  of  the  reverse  as  pain.  The 
consciousness  of  the  conatus  itself  persisting  as  further  activity,  and  guided 
in  its  direction  by  pleasure  or  pain,  is  desire.  From  these  three — pleasure, 
pain,  and  desire — Spinoza  proceeds  to  account  for  our  entire  affective 
nature,  as  combinations  of  these  with  various  cognitive  elements.3 

Spinoza  thus  makes  a  double  abstraction.  He  abstracts  the  agreeable 
element  out  of  our  various  feelings,  and  assumes  that  this  is  all  that  is 
unique  and  distinctive  about  them.  He  further  assumes  that  this  agreeable 
(or  disagreeable)  phase  is  simply  a  cognition.  He  recognizes  nothing  in 
pleasure  and  pain  but  a  kind  of  cognition,  and  he  recognizes  nothing  in 
the  various  emotions  and  sentiments  but  the  fusion  of  pleasure  and  pain 
with  images  and  ideas. 

When  the  mind  is  active,  it  always  experiences  pleasure,  since  it  is 
always  striving  for  its  own  enlargement  and  perfection.  It  may  also 
receive  pleasure  when  it  is  passive,  since  the  effects  of  external  stimula¬ 
tion  may  happen  to  be  in  accordance  with  its  welfare. 4  Furthermore, 
the  reason  itself  may  evoke  emotion,  and  seems  to  do  so  in  carrying  its 
dictates  into  action,  at  least  part  of  the  time.5 

1  Ethica,  II,  xlix,  Cor.  2  Ethica,  IV,  viii. 

3  Love,  for  instance,  is  pleasure  accompanied  by  the  idea  of  an  external  cause. 
( Ethica ,  III,  xiii,  Cor.) 

4  Ethica ,  III,  lviii,  lix. 

s  In  this  we  are  reminded  somewhat  of  Kant’s  employment  of  reverence  as  an 
emotion  induced  by  the  action  of  the  reason. 


22 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


The  positive  value  of  pleasure  and  emotion,  according  to  Spinoza’s 
account,  seems  then  to  be  to  indicate  the  direction  of  advancement  toward 
perfection,  and  thus  guide  the  conatus  in  its  activity.  They  are  thus  at 
the  same  time  cognitive  and  volitional — two  terms  which  mean  the  same 
with  him.  There  is  nothing  unique  or  distinctive  about  feeling,  as  com¬ 
pared  with  thought.  It  is  distinguished  from  it  only  by  being  confused , 
while  pure  thought  is  clear  and  distinct.  Thus  feeling  is  a  mark  of  imper¬ 
fection  and  finiteness. 

The  ideal  condition  in  a  universe  conceived  in  geometrical  terms 
must,  of  course,  be  static.  So  we  are  not  surprised  to  find  that  Spinoza’s 
beatitude  is  a  state  of  absolute  rest.  In  attaining  this  bliss  one  must, 
of  course,  be  active,  and  successively  pass  to  higher  states  of  perfection. 
During  this  transition  one  must,  of  course,  experience  pleasures.  But 
as  one  advances  higher  into  the  ether,  we  should  expect  that  one ’s  pleasures 
would  become  more  refined,  more  intellectual,  more  clear  and  distinct, 
and  less  confused.  Finally,  when  the  realm  of  beatitude  is  reached, 
we  should  expect  one’s  feeling  of  pleasure  to  be  altogether  dissolved  in 
the  clear,  cold  light  of  reason.  Along  the  line  of  Spinoza’s  argument, 
this  is  the  logical  conclusion.  Beatitude  and  the  intellectual  love  of  God 
ought  to  be  absolutely  devoid  of  any  affective  content  whatsoever. 

But  Spinoza  was  not  a  sufficiently  bloodless  man  to  be  consistent  with 
this  logical  conclusion  of  his  argument.  In  his  description  of  the  blessed 
state  expressions  slip  in  which  have  a  very  suspicious  emotional  warmth. 
Even  to  God  himself  this  impious  logician  ascribes  clearly  affective  ele¬ 
ments — confused  thoughts!1 

That  there  can  be  little  social  content  to  morality  or  any  high  conception 
of  duty  in  such  a  system  inevitably  follows.  The  Political  Treatise  sets 
out  to  demonstrate  all  social  content  from  the  principle  of  self-preservation 
and  enlargement.  The  only  duty  that  one  owes  to  society  is  to  look  out 
for  one’s  self,  and  the  pantheistic  conceptions  simply  serve  as  a  support 
to  reinforce  one  in  this  determination.2  His  mysticism,  so  far  as  he  has 
applied  it  to  conduct,  is  only  in  the  inductive  phase,  where  one  abstracts 
oneself  from  everything  in  the  way  of  social  obligations  to  lose  one’s  identity 
in  God,  rather  than  in  the  later,  deductive  phase,  where  one  loves  all  the 

1  E.  g.,  in  Etkica  V,  xxxv,  the  term  gaudet,  and  in  xxxvi,  laetitia,  are  used  in 
reference  to  God,  though  in  the  latter  case  with  an  apology.  In  xlii  the  mind  rejoices 
{gaudet)  when  in  the  state  of  beatitude,  and  its  “calm  acquiescence”  suggests  rather 
a  state  of  pleasant  repose,  than  one  of  pure  thought,  absolutely  devoid  of  feeling. 

2  Where  Spinoza  mentions  benevolence  and  gratitude  among  the  emotions,  it 
is  clear  from  the  references  which  he  gives  that  he  does  not  regard  them  as  at  all  dis¬ 
interested.  ( Ethica ,  III,  xxxiv,  xxxv.) 


THE  PERFECTIONISTS 


2  3 


creation  as  identical  with  one  in  God.1  To  be  sure,  the  content  which 
Spinoza  attempts  to  deduce  from  his  premises  geometrically  is  larger 
than  his  logic  will  admit  of,  and  the  system  breaks  down  here,  just  as  it 
does  in  his  treatment  of  beatitude.2  My  point  simply  is  that,  so  far  as 
Spinoza  is  true  to  his  method — and  he  aims  to  be  true  to  it  throughout — 
his  attempt  to  reduce  feeling  to  cognitive  terms  results  in  the  exclusion  of 
all  but  purely  egoistic  considerations  in  morals.  Identification  of  one’s 
self  with  God  is  not  egoistic  in  one  sense,  but  in  another  sense  it  is  the 
quintessence  of  egoism.  And  it  is  in  the  way  that  ignores  duties  to  others, 
because  of  one’s  identity  with  God,  that  Spinoza’s  system  works  out. 

Beatitude,  therefore,  at  the  close  of  the  Ethics ,  seems  to  be  wholly 
an  individualistic  affair.  It  is  as  attainable  by  a  Simeon  Stylites  sitting  upon 
his  pillar,  as  by  a  Francis  of  Assisi  busied  with  labor  for  his  fellow-men. 
The  beatitude  of  Malebranche,  as  we  have  seen,  is  of  a  distinctly  social 
character.  That  at  the  close  of  Spinoza’s  Ethics  is  entirely  individual¬ 
istic.  There  is  nothing  in  the  conception  to  suggest  that  the  presence  of 
others  is  necessary  for  its  enjoyment. 

In  Spinoza’s  account  we  find  pleasure  and  feeling  described  in  purely 
cognitive  terms,  as  confused  thought.  They  are  valuable  guides  to  action 
in  the  attainment  of  perfection,  but  when  this  state  has  been  reached,  the 
logic  of  the  mathematical  method  requires  that  beatitude  be  described 
as  wholly  intellectual,  and  quite  devoid  of  affective  contents.  Such  a 
beatitude  is  distinctly  individualistic  in  character,  and  in  this  respect 
furnishes  a  sharp  contrast  to  the  thought  of  Descartes  and  Malebranche. 

D.  LEIBNIZ 

Leibniz  was  more  of  a  man  of  affairs  than  any  of  his  predecessors  in 
the  perfectionist  school,  and  in  some  respects  his  presentation  of  pleasure 
and  happiness  represents  a  distinctly  more  modern  spirit.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  narrowing  tendency  of  rationalism  has  advanced  farther  with 
him  in  some  ways  than  with  Descartes  and  Malebranche.  His  freer 
method  of  exposition  and  wider  outlook  upon  life  kept  his  presentation  from 

1  Cf.  Paul  Hermant,  “Les  Mystiques,”  Revue  de  synthese  historique,  June,  1905 
(end). 

2  E.  g.,  when  he  says  that  every  man  that  follows  virtue  will  desire  others  to  have 
the  same  good  that  he  himself  possesses  {Ethics,  IV,  xxxvii),  that  he  will  render  back 
to  others  love  and  kindness  for  hatred  and  and  contempt  (xlvi),  and  that  the  love 
of  God  will  be  fostered  in  proportion  as  we  conceive  that  a  greater  number  of  men 
are  rejoicing  in  it  (V,  xx).  Such  passages  lead  us  to  see  that  Spinoza  had  a  larger 
social  sense  than  his  logic  admitted  of;  but  the  ideal  described  at  the  end  of  V  is 
wholly  individualistic. 


24 


PLEASURE  IN  NON -HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


being  so  narrow  as  that  of  Spinoza,  but  it  evidences  the  inevitable  result  of 
setting  up  perfection  as  the  moral  ideal,  and  attempting  to  define  pleasure, 
happiness,  and  the  whole  content  of  morality  in  terms  of  a  single 
conception.1 

Pleasure  is  described  as  the  perception  of  some  perfection.  The 
perfection  must  have  been  sufficient  to  be  notable,  to  afford  pleasure, 
properly  so  called.2  In  the  Nonveaux  essais  he  seems  to  adopt  the  Pla¬ 
tonic  idea  that  pleasure  must  always  be  preceded  by  antecedent  pain,  of 
which  it  is  the  relief.  However,  the  antecedent  pain  may  have  been  very 
faint,  even  petite ,  while  the  ensuing  pleasure  may  be  great  and  profound.3 
In  this  fact,  that  we  can  experience  great  pleasure  subsequent  to  only 
slight  pain,  we  perceive  the  goodness  and  wisdom  of  the  Creator. 

Here  there  seems  to  be  an  inconsistency  in  Leibniz’  definition  of  pleas¬ 
ure.  If  pleasure  arises  only  subsequent  to  preceding  pain,  how  can  the 
pleasure  be  greater  than  the  antecedent  pain  ?  An  effect  cannot  be  greater 
than  its  cause.  In  having  recourse  to  the  distinction  between  clear  and 
confused  ideas,  complicated  as  it  is  in  his  case  by  the  doctrine  of  petites 
perceptions ,  is  not  Leibniz  obscuring  the  issue,  and  failing  to  see  that  if 
the  pain  is  confused,  the  subsequent  pleasure  must  be  also  ?  Professor 
Dewey  calls  attention  to  this  feature  of  Leibniz’  doctrine  of  pleasure,  and 
remarks  that  Leibniz,  “  accepting  and  emphasizing  the  very  same  fact 
that  served  Schopenhauer  as  a  psychological  base  of  pessimism,  uses  it 
as  the  foundation  stone  of  optimism.  ”4  One  is  inclined  to  feel,  however, 
that  here  Schopenhauer  is  justified  rather  than  Leibniz,  if  we  hold  strictly 
to  this  definition  of  pleasure. 

Perhaps  the  best  way  to  interpret  Leibniz’  doctrine  of  pleasure  at  this 
point,  in  order  to  reconcile  it  with  the  rest  of  his  system,  is  to  suppose 
that  he  regarded  antecedent  pain  or  uneasiness  as  necessary  to  initiate  activ¬ 
ity;  but  that  the  activity,  once  begun,  is  pleasant  not  only  as  affording 
relief  from  antecedent  pain,  but  also  for  its  own  sake.  In  other  words, 
we  suppose  that  Leibniz  recognized  activity  as  pleasant,  after  it  has  once 
been  initiated,  although  he  held  the  Platonic  view  as  to  its  origin. 

In  the  Nouveaux  essais ,  at  least,  good  and  evil  are  very  explicitly 

1  The  chief  sources  from  which  we  have  to  derive  Leibniz’  ethical  views  are 
occasional  passages  in  the  Nouveaux  essais  and  a  few  fragments  published  by  Ger- 
hardt  in  Vol.  VII  of  his  works.  It  is  a  matter  of  great  regret  that  Leibniz  never  fully 
worked  out  his  ethical  system. 

2  I.  e.,  petites  perceptions  are  not  pleasure  {Works,  V,  149;  New  Essays,  English 
trans.,  167.)  The  citations  to  the  original  are  to  the  edition  of  Gerhardt. 

3  V,  1 5 1  f . ;  New  Essays,  trans.,  170. 

*  Leibniz’  New  Essays — A  Critical  Exposition,  114.  (Chicago,  1888.) 


THE  PERFECTIONISTS 


25 


defined  in  terms  of  pleasure  and  pain.1  In  this  work,  where  Leibniz 
shows  the  influence  of  Locke,  a  number  of  statements  sound  very  hedon¬ 
istic.  These  are  not  to  be  taken,  however,  as  indicating  a  departure  from 
his  previous  views,  and  those  of  his  school  in  general.  Descartes  had  said 
that  pleasure  and  happiness  are  very  closely  connected  with  the  highest 
good,  and  are  the  inducement  that  leads  us  to  seek  it;  Malebranche  made 
similar  and  even  stronger  statements;  and  Spinoza  even  made  pleasure 
and  pain  determine  the  direction  of  our  activity,  and  said  that  “we  deem 
a  thing  good  because  we  desire  it,”2  but  this  simply  meant  with  them 
that  it  is  through  pleasure  and  pain  that  we  recognize  perfection.  Leibniz’ 
thought  is  the  same.  The  only  difference  is  that  he  is  inclined  to  have 
more  confidence  in  pleasure  and  pain,  and  gives  them  perhaps  more  of 
a  sensuous  content — certainly,  more  than  Malebranche. 

The  reason  why  we  do  not  always  act  in  the  direction  of  the  highest 
good  (perfection)  and  the  greatest  happiness,  is  that  our  ideas  are  confused. 
We  reason  in  words  without  having  the  object  clearly  in  mind.  Our 
thoughts  are  not  both  clear  and  distinct.  We  often  have  to  act  hastily, 
without  having  time  to  think  out  the  results  of  what  we  do,  and  so  perceive 
the  pleasure  and  pain  (and  hence  the  perfection)  involved.  We  act  in 
the  way  that  affords  immediate  pleasure  which  we  can  perceive  clearly  and 
distinctly,  and  not  in  the  direction  in  which  our  perception  is  confused, 
although  greater  pleasure  (and  perfection)  lies  in  that  way.  The  remedy 
is,  of  course,  to  think  out  a  line  of  conduct  clearly  and  distinctly,  once  for 
all,  and  habituate  ourselves  to  act  thus  ever  after,  even  though  upon  subse¬ 
quent  occasions  our  thought  may  be  confused.3  Leibniz  here  offers  an 
interesting  contrast  to  Spinoza.  With  the  latter,  pleasure  always  is  con¬ 
fused  thought,  which  is  to  be  reduced  to  the  clear  and  distinct  ideas  of 
the  reason  and  lose  its  affective  characteristics;  with  Leibniz,  thought  is 
confused  in  thinking  of  an  action,  unless  the  pleasure  involved  in  it  is 
clearly  and  distinctly  perceived. 

Happiness  is  defined  as  a  condition  of  permanent  pleasure.  It  is  not 
a  state  of  perpetual  quietude,  however,  but  one  of  unceasing  activity.  It 
is  not  eternal  in  the  sense  that  a  logical  abstraction  is  eternal,  being  time¬ 
less;  it  is  rather  perpetual  within  the  temporal  series.  It  is  not  a  sum  of 
pleasures,  but  a  continual  progress  to  higher  and  ever  higher  stages  of 
pleasure  and  perfection.  One  can  never  attain  absolute  perfection; 
that  would  be  to  lose  one’s  identity  in  God.  But  this  would  be  an  impos- 

1  Works,  V,  149;  New  Essays,  trans.,  167. 

2  Ethics,  III,  ix,  note,  xxxix,  note;  IV,  viii. 

3  Works,  V,  170-73,  193;  New  Essays,  trans.,  190-93,  216. 


26 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


sibility  for  Leibniz,  not  merely  because  he  wished  to  remain  orthodox, 
but  because  it  would  contradict  the  essential  principles  of  his  system  for 
two  monads  to  lose  their  identity  and  become  one  monad.1 

Leibniz’  view  of  beatitude  thus  seems  to  be  quite  in  accordance  with  his 
monadology  in  that  it  preserves  individualism,  and  with  his  theology  as 
well.  We  cannot,  therefore,  agree  with  Mr.  Russell  that",  except  in  order 
to  be  orthodox,  his  ethics  (at  least  so  far  as  concerns  our  problem)  would 
have  been  similar  to  Spinoza’s.2  Professor  Jodi’s  charge  that  his  ethics, 
as  it  is,  is  too  similar  for  consistency  with  the  rest  of  his  thought,  seems  to 
me  more  justified.3  The  explanation  simply  is  that  Leibniz  had  not 
fully  worked  out  his  own  thought,  and  was  naturally  influenced  by  the  most 
complete  ethical  exposition  of  the  rationalistic  school. 

As  an  account  of  individual  development,  Leibniz’  account  of  pleasure, 
happiness,  and  perfection  appeals  to  one  very  strongly.  His  moral  goal 
is  a  state  of  activity,  such  as  one  would  expect  an  active  man  of  the  world 
to  present.  It  is  filled  with  more  of  the  spirit  of  our  own  age  and  nation 
than  the  ideal  of  any  other  rationalist.  Its  deficiency  comes  in  that  there 
is  no  place  in  it  that  is  very  prominent  for  duty  to  occupy,  nor  the  social 
demands  that  others  have  a  right  to  make  upon  us,  except  so  far  as  they 
coincide  with  the  interests  of  our  own  happiness  and  development.  The 
account  is  also  naive  in  failing  to  perceive  any  opposition  between  pleasure 
and  perfection. 

Its  social  deficiencies  are  not  so  great  as  they  logically  might  be  expected 
to  be,  for  one  reason.  Leibniz,  in  his  description  of  the  perfection  which 
affords  pleasure,  makes  a  certain  place  for  the  pleasures  of  a  social  sort 
by  saying  that  the  perfection  which  affords  pleasure  may  be  that  of  another, 
as  well  as  one’s  own,  or  even,  he  adds,  the  perfection  of  a  lifeless  pro¬ 
duction,  such  as  a  painting  or  other  work  of  art.4  The  inadequacy  of 
such  a  treatment  of  social  sentiments  upon  the  one  hand,  and  its  incon¬ 
sistency  with  perfectionism  as  a  whole,  were  not  observed  by  Wolff, 
but  later  furnished  a  problem  for  Mendelssohn. 

E.  WOLFF 

Wolff  is  largely  a  follower  of  Leibniz.  His  fuller  exposition  and 
lucid  style,  however,  made  his  writings  popular,  and  his  use  of  the  mathe¬ 
matical  method  caused  his  presentation  to  be  definite,  as  well  as  complete. 

1  Works,  V,  i8of. ;  VII,  86;  VI,  598  fT. ;  Mollat,  Lesebuch  zur  Geschichte  der 
Staatswissenschaft ,  go. 

2  A  Critical  Examination  0}  the  Philosophy  of  Leibniz ,  202.  (London  and  Cam¬ 
bridge,  1900.) 

3  Geschichte  der  Ethik ,  I,  356  f. 


4  Works,  VII,  86. 


THE  PERFECTIONISTS 


27 


For  these  reasons  his  importance  in  the  history  of  philosophy  is  perhaps 
greater  than  that  to  which  any  peculiar  merit  or  originality  would  entitle 
him.  The  mathematical  method  leads  in  his  case  to  the  limitation  of 
pleasure  to  confused  ideas,  as  it  did  with  Spinoza.  It  also  causes  the 
inconsistencies  into  which  he  falls  to  become  quite  obvious  to  the  reader, 
and  exposes  the  difficulties  into  which  the  school  had  fallen  more  patently 
than  had  been  the  case  with  any  previous  writer.  In  thus  fully  working 
out  the  rationalistic  conception  of  perfectionism,  Wolff  revealed  to  later 
writers  its  weak  points,  and  opened  the  way  for  new  efforts  at  repairing 
and  modifying  it,  until,  after  first  making  similar  efforts,  Kant  finally 
erected  a  quite  different  and  much  more  brilliant  moral  edifice. 

Wolff  attributes  to  the  soul  as  vis  representativa  an  inherent  tendency 
to  change  its  condition  in  the  direction  of  more  perfect  representation. 
For  realizing  this,  it  has  two  faculties — the  cognitive  and  appetitive.  The 
confused  ideas  of  sensation,  memory  and  imagination,  together  with  the 
lower  appetites  which  apprehend  the  good  under  confused  ideas  of  pleasure 
and  pain,  go  to  make  up  the  sensibility,  and  are  opposed  to  the  will  with 
its  clear  and  distinct,  rational  idea  of  the  good,  and  the  higher  cognitive 
faculties  which  co-operate  with  it. 

Pleasure  is  the  perception  of  some  perfection.  It  is  always  confused.1 
It  seems,  however,  to  be  the  necessary  spring  to  action,  at  least  upon  the 
part  of  the  sensibility.2  He  follows  Leibniz  in  saying  that  the  perfection 
perceived  need  not  be  one’s  own;  it  may  be  the  perfection  of  a  painting, 
a  clock,  another  person;  and  the  perception  of  God  affords  the  highest 
pleasure  of  all.3  Thus,  as  Sir  William  Hamilton  has  shown,  pleasure 
with  Wolff  seems  to  be  regarded  as  an  attribute  of  the  object.4  In  one 
respect  this  view  of  pleasure  was  profitable  for  ethical  purposes.  Pleasure 
upon  this  view  did  not  have  to  be  wholly  selfish.  There  could  be  such  a 
thing  as  disinterested  pleasure.  Thus  a  certain  social  content  could  be 
gotten  into  morality,  even  if  it  has  to  depend  upon  pleasure  to  some  extent 
to  initiate  action,  and  regards  happiness  as  the  necessary  reward  of  ethical 
action.  This  leaves  room  for  the  words  oder  anderer  in  the  rational  law 
of  action:  “Thue,  was  dich  und  deinen  oder  anderer  Zustand  vollkom- 

1  Psychologia  Empirica,  §536;  cf.  §511,  end.  Sometimes  pleasure  seems  to 
be  distinguished  rather  as  an  effect  of  this  perception,  but  the  distinction  does  not 
seem  to  be  important  and  is  not  long  maintained.  Cf.  Thun  und  Lassen ,  II,  §49. 

2  Gott,  Welt,  Seele,  etc.,  II,  §  133. 

3  Gott,  Welt,  Seele,  etc.,  II,  §129;  Thun  und  Lassen,  §§678,  691;  Philosophia 
Empirica,  §§512  ff . 

4  Lectures  on  Metaphysics,  II,  463. 


28 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


mender  machet:  unterlass,  was  ihn  unvollkommender  machet.”1  Such 
a  description  of  pleasure  and  feeling  is,  of  course,  lamentably  deficient 
in  leaving  nothing  by  which  the  unique  features  of  selfhood  can  be  dis¬ 
tinguished.  Any  perfection  affords  pleasure,  no  matter  whose.  And  all 
perfection  seems  to  afford  pleasure  in  the  same  way.  Thus  there  is  no 
ethical  problem  of  egoism  and  altruism  in  Wolff,  because  the  distinction 
between  ego  and  alter  is  not  made.  Wolff’s  description  of  pleasure  and 
feeling  is  the  most  abstract  which  we  have  to  consider,  for  this  reason.  It 
not  only  abstracts  the  agreeable  or  disagreeable  element  out  of  feeling,  and 
assumes  that  this  is  all  there  is  to  it;  it  also  abstracts  the  subjective  feature — 
the  very  characteristic  that  makes  feeling  unique  and  distinctive — and 
makes  pleasure  and  pain  be  a  part  of  objects  perceived  in  much  the  same 
way  that  sound  and  color  are  projected  into  the  object  by  common- 
sense. 

Pleasure  serves  two  rather  conflicting  roles  in  Wolff’s  account:  (i)  it 
is  confused  thought,  and  apprehends  imperfectly  the  perfection  which 
the  reason  cognizes  clearly  and  distinctly;  (2)  it  is  the  constituent  of 
which  happiness  is  composed,  and  happiness  is  the  reward  of  moral  action. 
The  whole  moral  problem  arises  from  the  confused  nature  of  feeling, 
and  the  errors  into  which  it  leads  us.2  The  remedy,  of  course,  is  to  reduce 
the  sensitive  appetitus,  the  seat  of  pleasure  and  pain,  into  agreement  with 
the  rational  appetitus ,  which  is  infallible.3  Since  the  judgments  of  the 
sensibility  are  confused,  and  those  of  the  reason  infallible,  it  would  seem 
to  be  desirable  to  reduce  the  former  to  terms  of  the  latter,  extinguish  it, 
as  much  as  may  be,  and  see  all  things  according  to  the  light  of  the  reason. 
This  would  have  brought  Wolff  into  substantial  agreement  with  Spinoza. 
Pleasures  and  pains  would  be  confused  ideas;  the  clearer  they  become, 
the  less  pleasure  there  would  be  in  them.  And  such  is  the  thought  in  some 
places,4  though  never  carried  to  its  logical  conclusions.  On  the  other 
hand,  he  sometimes  says  that  clearer  rational  discernment  affords  keener 
discrimination,  and  in  this  way  affords  the  perception  of  new  perfections, 
and  so  increases  instead  of  diminishes  pleasure.5 

This  last  view  seems  more  in  accordance  with  his  ruling  thought, 
and  with  the  view  of  beatitude,  which  he  takes  from  Leibniz,  which  con- 

1  Thun  und  Lassen ,  §  12;  Philo sophia  Practica,  Part  I,  chap,  ii,  esp.  §§  152, 
153,  188. 

2  Psychologia  Empirica ,  §511. 

3  “A  ratione  nullus  proficitur  error”  {ibid.,  §500). 

4  E.  g.,  Gott,  Welt,  Seele,  etc.,  II,  §  132;  Psychologia  Empirica,  §511  end,  §536. 

5  Psychologia  Empirica,  §§  530-32. 


THE  PERFECTIONISTS 


29 


sists  in  an  uninterrupted  progress  in  the  attainment  of  new  perfections, 
and  not  in  a  static  condition  of  absolute  perfection.1 

Without  attempting  to  solve,  or  perhaps  even  being  conscious  of,  the 
inconsistencies  in  his  account  of  pleasure  and  happiness,  the  moral  ideal 
with  which  Wolff  leaves  us  is  the  perfection  of  all  of  our  faculties,  and  to 
the  extent  to  which  this  perfection  is  attained  they  will  be  found  in  perfect 
harmony.  In  this  way  his  three  definitions  of  happiness — condition  of 
a  permanent  joy;  perception  of  uninterrupted  progress  to  higher  per¬ 
fections;  conformity  to  the  laws  of  nature  and  reason — run  together. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  summarize  the  palpable  inconsistencies  in 
perfectionism  which  this,  its  final  statement  by  Wolff,  has  really  failed  to 
overcome.  In  order  to  secure  the  co-ordination  of  pleasure,  happiness, 
and  moral  obligation  in  terms  of  perfection,  pleasure  has  not  only  been 
reduced  to  confused  thought,  but  has  lost  its  peculiar  personal  character, 
and  become  an  attribute  of  objects.  Morality  is  in  the  highest  sense 
rational,  and  yet  its  performance  is  attended  by  pleasure,  and  its  final 
reward  is  happiness.  These  difficulties  led  to  a  considerable  modification 
of  perfectionism  by  Mendelssohn,  and  to  still  more  sweeping  changes  by 
Kant.  But  as  these  writers  were  influenced  in  these  alterations  largely 
by  British  writers,  it  will  be  necessary,  before  taking  them  up,  to  pass  to 
the  development  in  Great  Britain. 

1  Philo sophia  Pradica,  §  374;  Thun  und  Lassen ,  §  44. 


III.  THE  BRITISH  NON-HEDONISTS 


Several  causes,  chief  among  which  was  the  more  rapid  growth  of 
individualism,  led  British  writers  much  more  quickly  to  a  recognition 
of  the  difficulties  which  oppose  the  reconciliation  of  pleasure  and  happi¬ 
ness  with  morality  and  duty,  than  was  the  case  upon  the  continent. 

British  writers,  in  giving  more  attention  to  man  as  an  individual,  came 
to  attribute  importance  to  what  peculiarly  distinguishes  one  man  from 
another  and  seems  uniquely  his  own — his  impulses  and  feelings.  Conse¬ 
quently,  British  treatises  were  occupied  with  ethical  and  psychological 
topics  at  a  time  when  the  interests  of  continental  writers  remained  mainly 
metaphysical.1 

Again,  the  continental  mind  is  more  given  to  conceptual  thinking, 
cares  more  for  logical  consistency,  is  more  doctrinaire;  and  so  it  naturally 
sought  for,  and  found  satisfaction  in,  such  a  concept  as  perfection.  Having 
found  their  point  of  departure  in  a  general  concept,  perfection,  continen¬ 
tal  writers  sought  to  include  within  it  the  whole  content  of  morality.  They 
went  on  to  define  pleasure  very  explicitly  as  the  perception  of  some  per¬ 
fection,  and  happiness  as  consciousness  of  the  possession  of  all  the  per¬ 
fection  of  which  we  are  capable.  While  at  the  beginning  of  the  movement, 
as  we  have  seen,  Descartes  and  Malebranche  are  largely  conscious  of 
social  interests,  rationalism,  having  once  adopted  the  conception  of 
perfection  as  the  highest  good,  and  gotten  its  logical  method  into  efficient 
working  order,  refused  to  recognize  either  any  social  content  as  moral 
obligation  that  could  not  be  deduced  from  perfection,  or  any  pleasures 
as  genuine  which  could  not  be  subsumed  under  both  it  and  happiness. 
The  whole  rationalistic  tendency  was  therefore  to  narrow  the  limits  of 
perfection,  happiness,  and  pleasure,  and  none  of  these  conceptions  could 
develop  very  far. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Anglo-Saxon,  whose  whole  disposition  is  more 
experimental,  and  who  cares  more  for  immediate  “ matters  of  fact”  and 
“  common-sense  ”  than  for  logical  deductions,  followed  the  empirical 
method  in  ethics,  as  he  has  followed  it  mainly  in  his  science,  philosophy, 
and  political  government.  The  British  writers  did  not  give  an  explicit 
definition  to  pleasure.  They  assumed  that  everyone  knows  what  pleasure 

1  While  Malebranche  and  Spinoza  both  wrote  treatises  upon  ethics,  their  exposi¬ 
tions  are  respectively  governed  by  religious  and  metaphysical  rather  than  psycho¬ 
logical  considerations. 

30 


THE  BRITISH  NON-HEDONISTS 


3 1 


is;  and,  while  this  assumption  caused  their  work  to  lack  precision,  it 
afforded  their  thought  entire  freedom  of  development.  As  they  cared  little 
for  concepts,  we  do  not  read  much  in  their  writings  of  “ perfection’ ’  after 
the  time  of  Cumberland.  Starting,  instead,  from  immediate  sense-expe¬ 
rience,  they  were  free  to  discover  inductively  whatever  varieties  of  pleasure, 
happiness,  and  moral  obligation  lay  in  their  way.  With  their  thought 
thus  afforded  free  expansion  in  all  directions,  they  soon  came  upon  a 
serious  opposition. 

After  the  English  nation  refused  any  longer  to  regard  the  church  as 
the  arbiter  and  interpreter  of  right  and  wrong,  the  more  conservative  of 
its  moral  philosophers  fell  back  upon  the  Stoic  conception  of  natural 
law,  which,  they  thought,  would  make  moral  principles  at  the  same  time 
rational,  and  not  less  eternal  and  immutable  than  God  himself.  Such 
morality  was  believed  at  the  same  time  to  be  existent  in  the  very  nature 
of  the  universe,  and  to  afford  to  the  individual,  then  coming  to  self-con- 
ciousness,  means  for  the  highest  realization  of  his  powers  and  capacities. 
The  social  content  of  this  morality  was  gradually  becoming  widened,  in 
consequence  in  part,  no  doubt,  of  the  nature  of  the  political  government, 
which,  if  not  popular,  still  afforded  some  opportunity  for  the  expression 
of  public  opinion,  especially  upon  the  part  of  the  classes  of  society  to  which 
the  ethical  writers  of  the  period  belonged.  Political  privileges  awakened 
in  some  measure  feelings  of  public  responsibility.  Again,  the  whole 
genius  of  Calvinism,  usually  the  faith  of  churchman  and  dissenter  alike, 
tended  to  emphasize  the  idea  of  duty,  and  to  strengthen  social  sanctions, 
in  a  wray.  In  consequence  of  these  tendencies,  morality  had  acquired  a 
larger  content  in  Great  Britain,  and  was  felt  to  be  more  authoritative, 
at  least  by  some  of  her  citizens,  than  was  the  case  upon  the  continent. 

And,  though  the  eighteenth  century  in  some  respects  represents  a 
lapse  from  the  rigorous  sense  of  duty  found  in  the  preceding  century, 
still  the  idea  of  the  personal  character  of  moral  responsibility  must  have 
persisted,  and  the  widened  social  sense  of  the  later  century  must  have 
impelled  a  wider  extension  of  the  content  of  this  duty.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  constantly  growing  sense,  both  of  the  worth  and  of  the  motive 
power  of  the  individual’s  own  feelings  and  impulses,  was  inevitably 
opposed  to  the  idea  of  compelling  him  to  submit  to  the  external  authority 
of  a  traditional  morality. 

When  British  ethical  theorists  were  thus  confronted  with  the  apparent 
opposition  between  this  traditional  morality,  which  had  been  regarded 
in  the  past  as  eternal  and  immutable,  and  which  now  had  a  widened  social 
content,  and  the  newly  discovered  individual,  with  his  impulses  and 


32 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


feelings  which  were  thought  of  as  the  necessary  springs  to  his  action, 
they  had  to  choose  between  two  alternatives:  (i)  The  old  moral  content 
might  be  frankly  thrown  overboard,  and  a  new  start  made,  deriving  the 
content  of  all  morality,  which  should  continue  to  be  regarded  as  genuine, 
from  the  impulses  and  feelings  of  the  individual  (which  usually  meant, 
from  his  egoistic  pains  and  pleasures).  (2)  The  attempt  might  be  made 
to  show  that  the  conventional  morality,  though  no  longer  justifiable  on 
the  old  arguments,  was  after  all  in  accordance  with  the  impulses  and 
desires  of  the  individual,  and  would  afford  him  more  satisfaction  and 
pleasure  than  any  other  line  of  conduct  possibly  could  do. 

The  second  alternative  was,  of  course,  the  one  adopted  by  the  more 
conservative  thinkers,  and  it  is  in  this  way  that  we  are  to  interpret  the 
work  of  Shaftesbury  and  his  successors.  The  mode  of  treatment  developed 
into  two  lines  of  thought  which  are  to  be  distinguished :  A.  The  widening 
of  the  conception  of  pleasure  by  finding  new  sources  and  kinds  of  pleasure, 
such  as  the  pleasures  of  the  moral  sense  and  of  sympathy,  in  order  to 
effect  a  reconciliation  between  the  demands  of  happiness  and  those  of 
morality.  This  line  of  thought  concedes  that  men  will  not  act  morally 
unless  they  perceive  that  such  action  is  in  the  interests  of  their  own  happi¬ 
ness,  and  seeks,  by  the  introduction  of  additional  pleasures,  to  prove 
that  this  is  the  case.  B.  A  critical  examination  of  human  actions,  which 
went  to  show  that  rational  self-love,  or  the  desire  for  happiness,  is  not  a 
primal  impulse  in  man’s  nature,  but  rather  a  regulative  principle  for 
the  direction  of  impulses  which  do  not  always  agree  with  it.  At  first — 
e.  g.,  with  Butler — this  was  not  used  to  question  the  necessity  that  delib¬ 
erate  action  must  be  in  the  interests  of  pleasure  and  happiness,  but  merely 
to  admit  of  other  regulative  principles,  such  as  conscience  and  benevo¬ 
lence,  provided  these  can  be  shown  to  be  surer  means  of  gaining  happiness 
than  the  direct  pursuit  of  it  by  self-love.  The  aim  was  thus  to  minimize 
the  divergence  between  self-love  and  morality,  and  present  philosophical 
arguments  to  show  their  ultimate  coincidence  in  the  cases  where  the  imme¬ 
diate  divergence  cannot  be  overcome.  Later,  however,  the  question 
arises  whether  even  rational  action  must  be  in  the  interests  of  self-love. 
Price  thinks  that,  when  the  reason  has  become  more  fully  developed,  it 
will  be  able  to  initiate  action  on  its  own  account;  and  Brown  concludes 
that  moral  excellence  is  a  stronger  motive  in  man,  even  as  he  is  consti¬ 
tuted  at  present,  than  personal  pleasure. 

A  noteworthy  feature  of  both  movements  is  that  happiness  is  always 
assumed  to  be  made  up  of  pleasures.  There  is  no  attempt  to  substitute 
a  refined  or  intellectualized  happiness,  distinguished  from  ordinary  happi- 


THE  BRITISH  NON-HEDONISTS 


33 


ness  as  blessedness  or  beatitude,  such  as  we  find  among  both  rational¬ 
istic  and  idealistic  writers  upon  the  continent.  Happiness  is  a  sum  of 

f 

pleasures,  or  a  state  of  continuous  pleasurable  enjoyment.  They  never 
thought,  before  the  time  of  Whewell,  of  defining  happiness  except  in  terms 
of  pleasure.  Their  whole  effort,  instead,  was  either  to  discover  new  kinds 
of  pleasure,  or,  finally,  to  question  whether  pleasure  is,  after  all,  the  sole 
motive  to  action. 

A.  THE  ATTEMPTS  TO  SAVE  MORALITY  BY  WIDENING  THE  CON¬ 
CEPTION  OF  PLEASURE 

A.  SHAFTESBURY 

Like  Descartes,  Shaftesbury’s  moral  ideal  is  the  perfection,  or  har¬ 
monious  development  and  co-operation,  of  man’s  faculties.  He  differs 
from  Descartes,  however,  in  paying  less  attention  to  the  intellectual  side 
of  our  nature,  and  a  great  deal  more  attention  to  the  feelings  or  affections. 
To  secure  a  proper  balance  or  co-ordination  of  these  is  both  to  secure 
our  highest  personal  development  and  happiness,  and  at  the  same  time 
to  fulfil  most  completely  our  social  obligations. 

He  distinguishes  three  kinds  of  affections.  Natural  affections  lead  to 
the  good  of  the  public;  self-affections  lead  only  to  the  private  good  of  the 
individual;  unnatural  affections,  to  neither.  Natural  affections  are  more 
necessary  to  private  pleasure  than  are  the  self-affections  themselves.  We 
do  not  enjoy  the  latter  unless  they  are  mixed  with  the  former;  even  the 
elemental  pleasures  of  food,  drink,  and  sex  are  not  of  much  pleasure  to 
us  unless  we  conceive  of  someone  else  sharing  them  with  us — else  they 
would  be  unnatural,  and  would  not  even  contribute  to  our  own  happiness. 

Now,  there  is  in  everyone  an  end  to  which  everything  in  his  constitu¬ 
tion  must  refer.  It  is  with  reference  to  this  that  his  affections  must  be 
tested.  If  they  afford  him  pleasures  which  aid  him  to  realize  this  end, 
they  are  moral,  and  otherwise  they  are  not  so. 

To  this  end  if  anything,  either  in  his  appetites,  passions  or  affections  be  not 
conducing,  but  the  contrary;  we  must  own  it  ill  to  him.  And  in  this  manner 
he  is  ill  with  respect  to  himself;  as  he  certainly  is,  with  respect  to  others  of  his  kind, 
when  any  such  appetites  or  passions  make  him  in  any  way  injurious  to  them. 
Now,  if  by  the  natural  constitution  of  any  rational  creature,  the  same  irregu¬ 
larities  of  appetite  which  make  him  ill  to  Others ,  make  him  ill  also  to  himself; 
and  if  the  same  regularity  of  affection  which  causes  him  to  be  good  in  one  sense, 
causes  him  to  be  good  also  in  the  other;  then  is  that  goodness  by  which  he  is 
useful  to  others  a  real  good  and  advantage  to  himself.  And  thus  virtue  and 
interest  may  be  found  at  last  to  agree.1 

1  Inquiry  concerning  Virtue  and  Merit,  44. 


34 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


One  of  the  main  theses  of  the  essay  is  to  show  that  this  agreement 
between  virtue  and  interest  does  take  place.  He  concludes,  in  heavy 
type,  that  “to  have  the  natural  and  good  affections  is  to  have  the  chief 
means  and  power  of  self-enjoyment;”  while  “to  want  them  is  certain 
misery  and  ill.”1 

To  secure  a  proper  balance  between  the  two  good  kinds  of  affections, 
and  to  suppress  the  third  kind,  is  then  the  moral  desideratum.  To  have 
the  self-affections  disproportionately  strong  is  to  lose  the  social  pleasures; 
to  have  too  strong  benevolent  impulses  would,  of  course,  be  detrimental 
to  society,  if  this  proved  detrimental  to  the  individual’s  own  welfare, 
and  consequently  his  ultimate  usefulness. 

As  a  sort  of  balance-wheel  to  regulate  the  affections,  and  give  additional 
motivation  to  the  effort  to  keep  them  properly  co-ordinated,  Shaftesbury 
introduces  the  moral  sense.  Without  this,  as  Sidgwick  observes,2  a  man 
would  still  find  it  to  his  interest  to  maintain  the  balance  between  the  self- 
and  the  natural  affections;  but  with  it,  one  has  an  additional  reason  for 
doing  so.  The  consciousness  of  this  harmony  or  balance  itself  affords 
pleasure,  and  the  absence  of  it  affords  pain. 

In  this  quasi-aesthetic  manner  Shaftesbury  tries  to  give  a  more  uni¬ 
versal  principle  of  morality  than  individual  pleasure.  Its  inadequacy, 
of  course,  is  obvious  enough.  He  has  the  same  implicit  faith  that  indi¬ 
vidual  self-development,  which  the  continental  writers  would  have  called 
perfection,  and  which  he  thinks  of  as  an  end  toward  which  everything 
in  our  constitution  must  refer,  entirely  coincides  with  the  attainment  of 
pleasure  and  happiness.  The  difference  is  that  he  thinks  of  activity 
mainly  in  terms  of  feeling,  and  all  his  values  are  feeling  values.  He  does 
not  show  the  slightest  tendency  to  reduce  pleasure  and  feeling  to  cognitive 
terms.  He  also  goes  farther  than  the  continental  writers  in  his  efforts 
to  show  that  individual  pleasures  involve  a  social  content,  and  that  the 
duties  which  man  owes  to  society  are  essential  to  his  own  pleasure.  He 
thus  has  a  keener  appreciation  of  the  social  content  of  morality  as  fur¬ 
nishing  a  problem  for  ethics  than  had  any  of  the  perfectionists.  Des¬ 
cartes  and  Malebranche,  to  be  sure,  have  a  large  social  sense ;  but  the 
reconciliation  of  social  demands  with  those  of  the  individual  did  not 
furnish  them  with  a  problem,  as  it  did  Shaftesbury. 

Such  is  Shaftesbury’s  easy  reconciliation  of  perfection,  social  virtue, 
and  individual  pleasure  and  happiness.  Himself  a  man  of  singularly 
genial  temperament,  he  felt  little  conflict  between  duty  and  his  own  happi- 

1  Inquiry  concerning  Virtue  and  Merit,  139. 

2  History  of  Ethics,  189. 


THE  BRITISH  NON-HEDONISTS 


35 


ness.  His  optimistic  reconciliation,  however,  did  not  fail  to  meet  with 
dispute  upon  the  part  of  his  contemporaries.  Its  weak  points  were 
exposed  by  Mandeville  and  others,  in  a  trenchant  manner.1 

B.  HUTCHESON 

Another  attempt  to  find  an  adequate  basis  for  morality  by  widening 
the  conception  of  pleasure  was  made  by  Hutcheson,  who  developed  the  idea 
of  a  moral  sense  as  a  special  faculty  which  has  for  its  function  the  percep¬ 
tion  of  virtue  and  vice,  and  the  feeling  of  pleasure  or  displeasure  accom¬ 
panying  the  perception.  At  first,  in  his  earliest  work,  the  Inquiry ,  the 
moral  sense  functions  in  an  appreciative  manner.  The  pleasures  which 
it  affords  are  of  an  aesthetic  sort;  and,  as  Scott  has  pointed  out,2  since 
for  Hutcheson  beauty  seems  to  mean  order,  regularity  of  spatial  propor¬ 
tions,  etc.,  rather  than  the  sensuous  pleasures  of  color,  sound,  etc.,  of 
which  he  had  little  appreciation,  the  morally  good  seems  to  afford  about 
the  same  pleasure  as  does  beauty.  In  his  later  works,  notably  the  Pas¬ 
sions,  and  still  more  in  his  posthumous  work,  the  Moral  Philosophy ,  the 
moral  sense  comes  to  take  on  more  of  a  cognitive  and  even  rational  nature, 
and  to  be  less  a  matter  of  immediate  intuition  and  feeling  than  was  the 
case  in  the  earlier  work.  The  difference,  however,  is  rather  one  of  empha¬ 
sis,  the  present  writer  is  inclined  to  think,  than  indicative  of  a  radical 
change  in  his  system  of  moral  philosophy. 

The  attitude  to  which  Hutcheson  throughout  remains  consistent 
is  that  pleasure  of  some  sort  is  always  the  spring  to  action;  and  that  virtue, 
or  obedience  to  the  moral  sense,  affords  the  most  pleasure  and  happiness. 
The  moral  sense  thus  is  the  evaluating  factor  which  appreciates  moral 
values,  and  affords  the  greatest  pleasure  to  us  of  any  part  of  our  nature. 

He  ha?  worked  out  a  careful  argument  to  prove  this  thesis  in  the  Pas¬ 
sions,  where  he  carefully  distinguishes  the  different  senses  which  we  have, 
and  compares  the  pleasures  of  each.  He  distinguishes  five  different 
kinds  of  senses,  viz.:  the  external  senses — sight,  hearing,  etc.;  the  u plea¬ 
sures  of  the  imagination ,”  which  arise  from  regular,  harmonious,  and 
uniform  objects,  novelty,  grandeur,  etc.;  the  public  sense,  which  gives 
a  determination  to  be  pleased  at  the  happiness  of  others,  and  to  be  uneasy 
at  their  misery;  the  moral  sense,  by  which  we  perceive  virtue  and  vice 
in  ourselves  and  others;  and  the  sense  of  honor,  by  which  the  approbation 
or  gratitude  of  others  is  a  necessary  occasion  of  pleasure.  The  first  two 

1  Mandeville,  Fable  of  the  Bees,  I,  162  (Edin.  ed.  1772).  Cf.  J.  H.  Tufts,  The 
Individual  and  His  Relation  to  Society  in  the  British  Ethics  oj  the  Eighteenth  Century , 
Monograph  Supplements  of  Psychological  Review,  VI,  No.  2,  p.  14. 

2  Francis  Hutcheson,  by  W.  R.  Scott. 


36 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


of  these  senses  are  individual  and  selfish  in  their  nature;  their  gratification 
is  the  object  of  self-love,  and  they  thus  furnish  interested  pleasure.  His 
argument  proceeds  carefully  to  compare  and  evaluate  the  pleasures 
originating  from  these  five  sources  according  to  their  intenseness  and 
duration.  He  finds,  following  Shaftesbury,  that  the  external  senses  afford 
little  pleasure  taken  by  themselves,  unmixed  with  the  pleasures  really 
due  to  the  higher  senses.  The  intellectual  pleasures  due  to  the  imagina¬ 
tion  are  much  greater;  but  still  decidedly  inferior  to  those  of  the  last 
three,  which  are  the  source  of  disinterested  pleasures.1  These  last  are  not 
only  superior  to  the  others  as  regards  their  intenseness  and  duration, 
but  are  so  much  superior  that  they  seem  to  be  qualitatively  different.2 
One  will  endure  the  severest  pains  of  the  first  two  kinds  of  senses  for  the 
sake  of  these  higher  pleasures.3 

In  the  treatment  in  the  Passions  the  “ public  sense”  and  the  “ sense  of 
honor”  seem  to  be  used  to  buttress  the  moral  sense  by  affording  additional 
sources  of  pleasure  which  reinforce  the  pleasures  of  the  moral  sense,  with 
which  they  always  seem  to  be  in  entire  agreement,  and  thus  more  deci¬ 
sively  throw  the  balance  of  pleasure  and  happiness  in  favor  of  morality, 
as  over  against  the  selfish  claims  of  the  pleasures  which  are  the  object 
of  self-love.  In  the  Moral  Philosophy  the  principle  of  “calm  benevo¬ 
lence”  is  used  in  the  same  way.  It  seems  to  be  a  principle  entirely  co¬ 
ordinate  with  the  moral  sense,  directing  action  in  the  same  directions, 
and  affording  additional  motivation.4  In  the  same  manner,  perfection 
is  also  employed,  especially  in  the  latter  work,  where  the  moral  perfection 
of  God  and  one’s  own  perfection  and  excellence  are  sources  of  pleasure 
to  one.5 

Considerations  of  religion  and  the  perfection  which  is  associated 
with  them  in  Hutcheson’s  mind  are  not  introduced  solely  for  the  purpose 
of  indicating  additional  kinds  of  pleasure.  A  morality  founded  upon  the 
perceptions  of  a  sense,  and  more  especially  upon  the  feelings  of  pleasure 
and  pain  which  attend  those  perceptions,  must  necessarily  lack  any  means 
of  demonstration  or  justification  other  than  its  own  presence  in  conscious¬ 
ness.  There  is  no  place  for  a  universal  standard  in  such  a  system.  So 
Hutcheson  is  obliged  to  confess:  “Everyone  judges  the  affections  of  others 

1  With  all  of  the  writers  discussed  in  this  section,  “disinterested”  pleasures  are 
pleasures  of  a  social  kind  into  which  considerations  of  self-love  do  not  enter. 

2  Passions,  §§5,  6;  esp.  p.  158.  Cf.  Moral  Philosophy,  I,  62,  221  ff. 

3  Passions,  142. 

4  Cf.  Sidgwick,  History  of  Ethics,  201  f. 

s  Moral  Philosophy,  I,  chaps,  ix,  x. 


THE  BRITISH  NON-HEDONISTS 


37 


by  his  own  Sense,  so  that  it  seems  not  impossible  that  in  these  Senses  men 
may  differ  as  they  do  in  taste.”1  In  the  Moral  Philosophy  he  is  led  to 
the  conclusion  that  the  moral  sense  requires  cultivation,  like  any  other 
faculty.2  Hutcheson  was  doubtless  conscious  that  his  system  thus  lacks 
a  universal  standard;  and  we  must  interpret  the  attempts  to  describe 
the  moral  sense  as  a  faculty,  to  ascribe  to  it  perfection  and  divine  approval, 
and  to  make  it,  together  with  “calm  benevolence,”  regulating  factors 
which  control  the  other  impulses  and  feelings,  as  all  attempts  to  ground 
morality  more  thoroughly  than  could  be  done  upon  the  mere  basis  of 
sense-perception  and  feeling. 

However  this  may  be,  and  however  much  the  influence  of  Butler 
may  have  led  him  to  the  modification  of  his  earlier  presentation,  in  which 
the  moral  sense  seemed  to  serve  as  an  immediate  touchstone  by  which 
right  and  wrong  could  be  perceived  without  reflection,3  the  moral  sense 
still  remained  a  faculty  analogous  to  the  other  senses  with  pleasure  and 
pain  attending  its  operations,  and  through  these  feelings  right  and  wrong 
are  recognized,  while  the  reason  is  only  the  passive  agent,  carrying  out 
the  commands  of  the  moral  sense,4  If  errors  occur,  these  are  at  least  as 
likely  to  be  due  to  erroneous  judgment  upon  the  part  of  the  reason  as  to 
lack  of  refinement  upon  the  part  of  the  moral  sense. 

Hutcheson’s  system  employed  the  conception  of  pleasure  as  the  basis 
of  moral  values  and  spring  to  action  in  a  broad,  free,  and  discriminating 
manner.  He  is  thus  able  to  get  a  wide  social  content  into  morality.  His 
treatment  of  the  pleasures  of  benevolence  and  the  moral  sense  suggests 
the  modern  conception  of  a  social  self,  which  is  broader,  as  well  as  deeper 
and  more  genuine,  than  the  narrow  self  of  self-love.5 

In  his  system  we  find  pleasure,  happiness,  virtue,  perfection,  religion, 
and  man’s  social  and  benevolent  impulses  working  together  in  perfect 
harmony.  The  scheme  has  excluded  purely  individual  pleasures  where 
these  are  opposed  to  social  good,  and  is  unaware  of  any  claims  of  duty, 
effort,  or  self-denial  that  do  not  afford  pleasure  and  happiness  to  the  agent, 
taking  these  last  terms  in  their  widened  significance. 

Hutcheson  differs  from  the  rationalistic  accounts  in  his  recognition  of 
a  much  wider  social  content  of  morality,  and  in  a  vastly  larger  and  more 
discriminating  account  of  pleasure  and  feeling  in  their  moral  aspects. 
Whereas  the  rationalists  tried  to  make  sense-perceptions  and  feelings 
subordinate  to  rational  concepts,  Hutcheson  makes  the  moral  sense  domi- 

1  Passions,  234;  cf.  Scott,  op.  cit.,  283.  4  Moral  Philosophy ,  I,  58-61. 

2  I,  58-61.  5  Cf.  J.  H.  Tufts,  op.  cit.,  p.  22. 

3  Inquiry,  Tr.  ii,  §  i,  esp.  p.  115. 


38 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


nate  our  nature,  and  regards  the  reason  as  an  agent  employed  in  carrying 
out  its  commands.  He  excels  them  in  his  broader  and  more  compre¬ 
hensive  view  of  life;  he  is  inferior  to  them  in  his  lack  of  a  basic  rational 
principle  which  would  furnish  a  logical  and  universally  valid  foundation 
for  ethics,  since  they  came  much  nearer  to  this,  to  say  the  least,  than  he 
did. 

C.  HARTLEY 

Another  attempt  to  effect  the  agreement  of  pleasure  and  morality  by 
widening  the  conception  of  pleasure  was  made  by  Hartley.  This  he 
sought  to  do,  not  so  much  by  seeking  new  sources  and  kinds  of  pleasure, 
as  Shaftesbury  and  Hutcheson  had  done,  as  by  giving  an  account  of  the 
origin  of  the  different  kinds  of  pleasure,  which  should  go  to  show  that 
social  pleasures  represent  a  higher  state  of  development  than  do  physical 
and  purely  individual  pleasures. 

He  follows  Hutcheson  in  distinguishing  different  kinds  of  pleasure, 
each  of  which  is  referred  to  a  “sense,”  and  in  arranging  these  senses  in 
a  hierarchy,  with  the  moral  sense  supreme  above  the  others.  He  differs 
from  Hutcheson,  however,  in  two  important  respects.  With  Hartley 
the  physical  pleasures  and  pains  furnish  the  source  from  which  all  of  the 
others  are  derived  by  the  mechanism  of  association.  Each  sense  is  more 
complex  than  the  one  below  it  in  the  scale,  and  in  general  is  a  better  medium 
for  securing  the  lower  type  than  the  inferior  one  itself.1  Each  sense  also 
affords  derived  pleasures  of  its  own,  which  are  more  comprehensive, 
and  afford  pleasure  and  satisfaction  to  larger  aspects  of  our  nature,  than 
the  ones  below  it.  The  moral  sense  represents  the  most  complete  view 
of  man’s  nature,  embraces  all  the  pleasures  of  the  lower  senses  that  can 
be  consistently  brought  into  harmony  with  one  another  and  with  it,  and 
thus  is  the  securest  means  of  bringing  happiness  to  the  whole  of  our  nature, 
including  the  future  as  well  as  the  present.  Self-love,  which  first  seeks 
only  the  pleasures  of  the  external  senses  and  those  of  the  imagination, 
when  it  becomes  rationalized  finds  its  own  self  annihilation  in  the  moral 
sense  and  in  the  love  of  God,  since  in  these  the  very  pleasures  at  which 
it  aims  are  most  completely  satisfied.2 

Hartley’s  argument  thus  reinforces  that  of  Hutcheson  in  a  significant 
manner.  Hutcheson  could  only  compare  the  pleasures  of  the  different 
senses  with  one  another,  and  try  to  show  that  those  of  morality  are  greatest. 
Hartley  makes  the  different  senses  grow  out  of  each  other,  and  shows 
that  they  all  have  a  common  end,  man’s  happiness,  and  that  their  occa- 

1  Observations  on  Man ,  fourth  ed.  (London,  1830),  II,  279  ff. 

2  Ibid.,  II,  282. 


THE  BRITISH  NON-HEDONISTS 


39 


sional  opposition  is  simply  the  opposition  of  a  less  highly  co-ordinated 
group  of  pleasures  to  a  more  perfectly  co-ordinated  one.  We  are  thus 
able  to  see  why  there  is  an  opposition  in  the  nature  of  man,  since  he  is 
a  developing  being,  and  how  it  is  to  be  overcome. 

Another  important  respect  in  which  Hartley  differs  from  Hutcheson 
is  in  viewing  these  various  “ senses”  as  merely  combinations  of  pleasures 
and  pains,  which  have  to  do  wholly  with  the  affective  side  of  our  nature.1 
The  moral  sense  as  moral  faculty,  especially  in  Hutcheson’s  later  works, 
performs  distinctly  cognitive  functions.  It  perceives  good,  and  therefore 
experiences  pleasure.  While  Hartley’s  presentation  makes  it  clear  that 
pleasures  are  the  immediate  springs  to  action,  it  is  hard  to  decide  just 
how  the  intellectual  side  of  our  nature  combines  with  them  in  the  moral 
act,  and  also  how  right  and  duty  are  discerned.  When  our  action  finally 
becomes  perfectly  subjected  to  the  moral  and  religious  senses  through 
the  principle  of  association,  “duty  will  at  last  become  a  pleasure,  and  a 
person  be  made  to  love  and  hate  merely  because  he  ought.”2  This  makes 
it  clear  that  duty  and  pleasure  do  not  now  perfectly  coincide,  and  seems 
to  suggest  that  duty  must  be  apprehended  cognitively,  and  not  by  the 
same  manner  that  pleasure  is  experienced.  He  does  not,  however,  explain 
how  this  is  done,  and  so  we  are  left  in  doubt  as  to  what  is  his  moral  cri¬ 
terion  or  standard,  how  it  is  experienced,  and  how  it  co-operates  with 
pleasure  in  the  moral  act. 

A  conspicuous  psychological  error  in  Hartley’s  account  is  in  regarding 
pleasure  and  pain  as  ideas  of  much  the  same  nature  as  other  ideas,3  with 
which  they  can  be  associated  in  such  a  manner  that  a  cognitive  idea  may 
be  expected  to  be  attended  with  the  same  affective  idea  whenever  it  is 
recalled.4 

The  attempt  to  derive  the  intellectual  from  the  physical  pleasures 
by  means  of  the  principle  of  association  is  not  satisfactory;  and  he  is 
scarcely  more  successful  in  showing  how  moral  and  social  pleasures  are 
derived  from  intellectual  ones  of  an  egoistic  sort.  In  each  case  he  is 
obliged  to  slip  in  a  new  content,  of  whose  justification  upon  the  basis  of 
his  method  we  do  not  feel  fully  convinced.  In  this  respect  Hartley’s 
relation  to  succeeding  development  reminds  us  of  Descartes.  He  is  him¬ 
self  conscious  of  a  wide  social  and  ethical  content,  but  introduces  a  method 
that  is  not  adequate  enough  to  cover  it.  The  result  is  that  his  successors, 

1  Ibid.,  I,  98  f. 

2  Ibid.,  I,  497  f.;  cf.  II,  279  k  Although  his  treatment  does  not  always  seem 
consistent  with  this  position,  these  statements  arc  very  explicit. 

3  Ibid.,  I,  pp.  ii,  iii.  4  Ibid.,  I,  82  k 


40 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


who  tried  to  use  his  method  consistently,  and  to  derive  the  whole  content, 
both  of  morality  and  of  pleasure,  from  simple  sense-experiences,  inevitably 
narrowed  the  content  of  each  in  a  manner  that  both  contradicts  our  intro¬ 
spection  and  overlooks  a  large  part  of  our  social  duties  and  pleasures. 

D.  HUME 

We  find  an  illustration  of  the  narrowing  tendency  of  the  principle  of 
association  when  employed  to  deduce  the  principles  of  moral  action  from 
immediate  impressions  of  pleasure  and  pain,  in  the  works  of  a  contempo¬ 
rary  of  Hartley — David  Hume. 

In  the  Treatise  the  idea  seems  to  be  that  the  good  is  to  be  defined  in 
terms  of  immediate  impressions  of  pleasure  and  pain,  and  that  practical 
ideas  secure  the  vividness  necessary  to  become  impressions  through  “  sym¬ 
pathy,”  just  as  the  same  takes  place  in  the  intellectual  sphere  through 
“ custom”  or  “habit. ”  In  contrast  to  Hartley,  sympathy  is  not  due  to 
a  new  combination  of  pleasures  affording  a  higher  and  more  spiritual 
form  of  pleasure  than  the  physical  feelings  from  which  it  has  been  derived. 
It  is  rather  a  process  through  which  we  feel  the  same  immediate  pleasures 
and  pains  that  others  about  us  feel,  as  the  result  of  a  sort  of  transference 
or  contagion.1 

Two  objections  to  such  a  theory  at  once  arise.  First,  it  makes  no 
qualitative  distinction  between  purely  personal  pleasures  and  pains  and 
those  of  sympathy.  A  parent  may  testify  that  his  feelings  have  been  as 
acute  when  he  witnessed  his  child  suffering  intense  physical  pain  as  if, 
he  had  suffered  it  himself;  but  he  could  hardly  say  that  his  feelings  were 
exactly  the  same  as  those  of  his  child.  Similarly,  one  may  sympathize 
with  a  young  man  whose  fiancee,  preferring  a  wealthier  man,  has  suddenly 
jilted  him;  but  one’s  feelings  would  not  be  identical  with  his,  especially 
in  the  way  one  felt  toward  the  lady.  Secondly,  such  an  account  of  sym¬ 
pathy  as  the  one  here  described  affords  no  more  inducement  to  relieve 
the  suffering  of  another  person  whose  misery  causes  us  to  suffer  through 
misery  rather  than  simply  to  turn  our  attention  to  other  channels  and 
become  oblivious  of  the  cause  of  our  suffering. 

It  was  doubtless  from  some  sense  of  such  difficulties  as  these  that  we 
find  Hume,  even  in  the  Treatise ,  not  always  consistent  with  the  theory 
that  all  moral  and  social  impulses  are  the  result  of  a  sympathy  that  is 
simply  a  matter  of  affective  imitation  or  contagion.  The  moral  “pleases 
after  a  particular  manner,”2  and  goodness  and  benevolence  are  disin- 

1  Treatise ,  Book  II,  Part  I,  §  xi;  cf.  J.  H.  Tufts,  op.  cit.,  38  f. 

2  Treatise,  Book  III,  Part  I,  §ii;  cf.  Tufts,  op.  cit.,  39  f. 


THE  BRITISH  NON-HEDONISTS 


4i 


terested.1  In  the  Enquiry  this  change  of  attitude  is  much  more  marked. 
Passages  are  to  be  found  in  which  the  old  view  persists,  but  other  passages 
suggest  a  quite  different  view.  Sympathy  is  frequently  described  here 
as  a  distinct  emotion  or  impulse,2  furnishing  pleasures  of  its  own  which 
do  not  need  at  all  to  be  reduced  to  egoistic  ones.  In  fact,  the  doctrine 
that  all  our  desires  are  ultimately  due  to  self-love  is  very  strongly  attacked.3 

Hume  thus  came  to  regard  the  pleasures  of  sympathy,  benevolence, 
and  the  moral  sense  as  different  in  kind  from  our  personal  pleasures; 
and  in  this  later  position  Hume  may  be  classed  among  those  non-hedonis- 
tic  ethical  writers  who  widened  the  conception  of  pleasure  so  as  to  include 
other  content  than  the  pleasures  of  self-love,  in  order  to  preserve  its  agree¬ 
ment  with  morality. 

Though  the  pleasures  of  sympathy  thus  seem  to  have  assumed  a 
uniqueness  and  qualitative  superiority  of  their  own,  in  Hume’s  mind, 
he  never  broke  entirely  free  from  the  limitations  which  the  conception 
of  sympathy  and  the  principle  of  association  gave  to  the  range  of  his  ethical 
vision,  and  he  is  quite  unaware  of  any  duties  which  are  not  pleasures  of 
some  kind,  or  of  any  difference  between  social  and  moral  demands.  It 
is  a  striking  fact  that  the  most  extreme  of  English  empiricists  is  limited 
in  his  ethical  treatment  by  the  machinery  of  his  method  and  his  conception 
of  sympathy  in  a  way  that  in  its  logical  effect  reminds  us  more  of  the 
rationalists  than  does  the  system  of  any  other  British  writer  who  comes 
within  the  range  of  this  investigation. 

The  attempt  to  derive  moral  conduct  from  simple  pleasures  and  pains 
by  means  of  the  principles  of  sympathy  and  association  is  essentially  an 
attempt  to  define  morality  in  terms  of  a  few  conceptions,  viz.:  pleasures, 
happiness,  sympathy,  and  association.  These  conceptions  bear  a  fixed 
relationship  to  one  another,  and  any  content,  to  be  recognized  as  moral, 
must  comply  with  these  requirements.  While  the  logic  of  his  method 
has  a  narrowing  effect  upon  Hume’s  view  of  morality,  he  at  the  same 
time  recognizes  larger  moral  demands  than  he  can  get  into  his  system. 
This  is  parallel  in  a  striking  manner  to  the  situation  among  the  rationalists. 
They  had  attempted  to  define  pleasure  and  happiness,  virtue  and  duty 
all  in  terms  of  perfection.  This  attempt  inevitably  led  to  a  narrowing 
of  moral  content;  and  when  the  mathematical  method  was  strictly  fol¬ 
lowed,  as  in  the  case  of  Spinoza,  the  content  to  which  morality  is  justified 
seems  altogether  inadequate,  and  other  content  is  illogically  slipped  in. 

1  Treatise,  Book  III,  Part  III,  §  iii. 

2  Tufts,  op.  cit.,  39  f.;  Enquiry,  214  ff.,  259,  271. 

3  Ibid.,  266  ff. 


42 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


The  rigorous  employment  of  either  rationalist  or  empiricist  methods  thus 
led  to  similar  logical  difficulties. 

E.  ADAM  SMITH 

A  much  more  satisfactory  ethical  presentation  of  sympathy  is  made 
by  this  follower  of  Hume.  He  maintains,  with  a  consistency  wanting  in 
Hume,  that  the  sympathy  which  is  the  cause  of  moral  sentiments  is  both 
wholly  disinterested1  and  the  largest  source  of  pleasure  which  we  have.2 

In  some  respects  Smith  represents  a  genuine  widening  of  morality 
beyond  the  bounds  of  any  of  his  predecessors,  inadequate  as  is  the  exclusive 
use  of  the  conception  of  sympathy  to  explain  all  social  and  moral  content. 
This  is  notably  the  case  in  his  use  of  conscience,  the  sympathy  of  a  supposed 
impartial  spectator  situated  within  our  breasts,  who  regards  all  our  actions 
with  approval  or  disapprobation.  The  idea  is  a  suggestive  one,  and  has 
the  effect  of  presenting  the  claims  of  duty  and  conscience,  not  only  with 
greater  force  and  vividness,  but  with  greater  sublimity,  than  perhaps 
is  the  case  with  any  other  writer  who  derives  their  content  solely  from 
feelings  of  disinterested  pleasure.3 

This  large  recognition  of  moral  obligation  is  due  to  two  reasons,  the 
second  of  which  is  a  consequence  of  the  first.  He  recognizes  moral  and 
social  pleasures  as  immediate,  and  so  is  not  obliged  to  deduce  them  from 
the  pleasures  of  self-love.  Consequently,  he  is  not  obliged  to  explain  so 
much  of  our  moral  sentiments  by  the  principle  of  association,  more  of 
them  being  due  to  “ immediate  sense  and  feeling.”4  In  fact,  the  explicit 
use  that  he  makes  of  association  under  the  terms  “custom”  and  “habit” 
is  very  little,  being  mainly  to  account  for  the  absurdities  of  fashions  and 
perverted  moral  tastes. 

The  difficulties  in  such  a  presentation  are,  of  course,  obvious  enough. 
Hume’s  empiricism,  if  fully  worked  out,  is  as  disastrous  in  ethics  as  in 
epistemology.  If  all  conduct  is  merely  due  to  feelings — even  though 
partly  to  disinterested  ones — and  morality  is  simply  a  matter  of  associa¬ 
tions  fixed  through  custom  and  habit,  it  has  no  stability,  and  no  way  in 
which  it  can  justify  itself,  the  moment  that  it  is  called  into  question.  The 
necessity  of  finding  a  firmer  basis  was  felt  by  Hutcheson,  who  was  led  to 
attribute  to  his  “moral  faculty”  cognitive  and  even  rational  functions, 
so  far  as  he  could  without  prejudice  to  his  system  as  a  whole ;  and  the  same 

1  I.  e.,  not  due  to  the  pleasures  of  self-love.  See  p.  36  above,  first  footnote. 

2  Theory  0}  Moral  Sentiments ,  Part  I,  Sec.  I,  chaps,  i  and  ii. 

3  E.  g.,  the  eloquent  description  of  conscience  in  Part  III,  chap.  iii. 

4  Ibid.,  Part  VII,  Sec.  VII,  chap.  ii. 


THE  BRITISH  NON-HEDONISTS 


43 


need  is  implied  in  Smith’s  description  of  the  “impartial  spectator.”  The 
very  idea  of  impartiality  implies  that  one  is  not  governed  wholly  by  one’s 
feelings  in  one’s  decisions:  and  in  referring  conduct  to  the  approval  of 
such  a  spectator,  Smith  is  unconsciously  introducing  a  rational  factor 
into  the  exercise  of  moral  sentiments.  It  is  only  on  account  of  this  uncon¬ 
scious  inconsistency  that  Smith  can  ascribe  so  much  force  and  authority 
to  the  decisions  of  this  unseen  spectator. 

It  is  exactly  this  difficulty  that  led  British  non- hedonists  to  abandon 
the  attempt  to  make  morality  coincident  with  a  widened  sense  of  pleasure, 
and  to  look  instead,  so  long  as  they  continued  to  regard  pleasure  as  the 
necessary  spring  to  action,  for  some  rational  principle  which  might  guide 
and  regulate  our  feelings  of  pleasure,  and  hence  our  actions.  It  is  in 
this  way  that  we  are  to  interpret  Butler  and  Price,  no  less  than  Kant. 

B.  SYSTEMS  REVEALING  AN  INCREASING  DIVERGENCE  BETWEEN 

MORALITY  AND  PLEASURE,  AND  A  GRADUAL  REPUDIATION 
OF  PLEASURE  AS  EXCLUSIVE  MOTIVE 

Long  before  all  non-hedonistic  writers  had  abandoned  the  attempts 
through  the  discovery  of  new  and  larger  sources  of  moral  pleasure  to 
reconcile  the  old  content  of  morality,  believed  by  an  earlier  age  to  be  the 
expression  of  the  eternal  laws  of  nature,  with  the  pleasures  of  the  indi¬ 
vidual  which  were  thought  to  be  the  real  motives  to  his  action — another 
line  of  argument  had  made  its  appearance. 

The  writers  who  took  the  new  point  of  view  recognized  that,  widen 
the  conception  of  pleasure  much  as  we  may,  its  pathway  does  not  imme¬ 
diately  coincide  with  that  of  duty.  They  therefore  sought  to  show  that 
the  way  of  pleasure  is  a  winding  course  which  leads  nowhere,  while  that 
of  duty  actually  reaches  the  goal  of  happiness  which  the  followers  of  the 
other  path  seek  in  vain.  This  argument  seeks  to  minimize  the  divergence 
between  the  two  paths  as  much  as  possible  in  order  to  demonstrate  that 
the  way  of  duty  leads  in  the  direction  which  seems  to  be  indicated  by  that 
of  pleasure.  At  the  same  time  the  genuineness,  or  at  least  the  exclusive¬ 
ness,  of  pleasure  as  the  motive  of  human  conduct  becomes  increasingly 
called  into  question. 

A.  BUTLER 

In  the  Sermons  Butler  begins  with  a  careful  examination  of  human 
nature,  in  which  he  finds  that  we  have  a  number  of  particular  impulses 
and  passions,  and  three  regulative  rational  principles:  self-love,  which 
leads  us  to  seek  our  own  happiness;  benevolence,  which  leads  us  to  seek 
the  happiness  of  others;  and,  supreme  above  all  other  principles,  conscience, 


44 


PLEASURE  IN  NON -HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


which  embraces  the  whole  of  our  nature  and  has  a  distinct  authority 
of  its  own.1  The  decrees  of  conscience  in  regard  to  the  content  of  moral 
obligation  are  therefore  final;  they  express  not  only  the  highest  laws  of 
our  own  nature,  but  those  of  the  universe,  which  are  prior  to  the  acts  of 
God  himself.2 

But,  authoritative  as  the  voice  of  conscience  is,  the  mere  fact  of  its 
authority  does  not  guarantee  that  it  will  be  obeyed.  Its  voice  must  meet 
with  a  response  in  man’s  principles  of  motivation.  Conscience  seems 
rather  to  be  a  principle  of  moral  discernment  than  an  immediate  spring 
to  action.  Its  decrees  must  be  proved  to  be  in  agreement  with  self-love 
before  man  will  act  upon  them.3 

A  critical  examination  of  self-love,  however,  reveals  its  deficiencies. 
It  is  not  itself  invariably  acted  upon.  Man  has  a  multitude  of  impulses 
and  desires  which  are  as  likely  as  not  to  be  opposed  to  his  happiness.4 
Moreover,  the  direct  search  for  pleasure  often  defeats  its  own  end — the 
well-known  paradox  of  hedonism.5  We  thus  discover:  (i)  self-love  is  not 
an  invariable  principle  of  action,  since  in  unreflective  moments  (and  most 
of  our  moments  are  not  deliberate)  we  do  not  act  upon  it;  (2)  self-love 
is  not  an  infallible  guide  even  when  followed,  but  often  leads  us  astray. 
The  next  point  is  to  show  that  self-love  in  the  main  leads  to  the  same 
result  as  conscience,  that  in  the  diverging  cases  conscience  is  the  safer  guide, 
and  that  we  have  good  reason  to  believe  that  through  conscience  we 
shall  obtain  the  happiness  which  is  the  desire  of  self-love,  but  to  which 
self-love  cannot  be  depended  on  to  lead  us.  This  postulation  of  the  final 
agreement  of  duty  and  happiness  is  defended  by  a  lengthy  argument  in 
the  Analogy .6 

The  immediate  coincidence  of  pleasure  and  morality  has  thus  been 
definitely  abandoned.  This  affords  a  freer  method,  and  one  is  able  to 
discover  new  lines  of  duty  and  new  kinds  of  pleasure,  since  the  immediate 
identity  of  the  two  is  no  longer  assumed.  But  the  divergence  must  not 
be  increased  any  more  than  can  be  helped;  and  the  argument  is  always 
to  show,  wherever  possible,  that  they  really  agree,  since  upon  their  usual 
agreement  rests  in  large  part  the  evidence  for  the  final  agreement  of  the 

1  It  seems  to  me  that  Butler  very  clearly  makes  self-love  inferior  to  conscience 
as  regards  moral  authority,  if  indeed  self-love  can  be  said  to  have  any  authority  at  all. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  is  the  necessary  motive  to  action  in  cases  of  deliberation.  Bernard 
(, Sermons  0}  Butler,  note  B)  is  therefore  correct,  as  vs.  Sidgwick  {History  of  Ethics, 
196). 

2  Analogy,  ed.  by  Bernard  (London,  1900),  p.  112;  cf.  note  E,  by  Bernard. 

3  The  famous  “cool  hour”  passage,  Sermon  XI  (p.  151  in  Bernard’s  edition). 

4  Ibid.,  139  b  5  Ibid.,  141.  6  Analogy,  Part  I,  chap.  iii. 


THE  BRITISH  NON-HEDONISTS 


45 


exceptional  instances.  Butler’s  exposition  evokes  our  admiration  on  ac¬ 
count  of  his  keen  comprehension  of  the  problem.  He  recognizes  the 
divergence  between  duty  and  pleasure,  and  the  ethical  questions  arising 
out  of  it,  as  no  one  else  did,  previous  to  Kant.  He  sees  that  the  diver¬ 
gence  cannot  be  overcome  by  the  assumption  of  the  pleasures  of  a  moral 
sense,  since  such  a  treatment  cannot  furnish  to  morality  the  authority 
which  is  its  due.1 

There  are,  however,  at  least  two  serious  difficulties  which  suggest 
themselves  to  the  reader  of  Butler.  First,  the  reconciliation  of  duty  and 
happiness  is  effected  only  by  means  of  a  lengthy  philosophical  argument 
which  the  plain  man  cannot  be  expected  to  understand,  although  we  can¬ 
not  excuse  him  for  that  reason  from  the  performance  of  his  moral  obliga¬ 
tions.  Secondly,  it  is  difficult  to  see  why  we  have  such  a  faculty  as  self- 
love  at  all.  Why  would  not  conscience,  as  supremely  regulative  principle, 
lead  us  to  care  for  our  own  welfare  as  much  as  is  our  duty,  without  tempting 
us  to  go  astray?  In  Hartley’s  account,  which  represents  a  much  less 
advanced  position  in  his  retention  of  the  moral-sense  doctrine,  we  see 
an  advantage  here,  at  least.  Hartley  can  explain  the  conflict  as  one  between 
earlier  and  later  effected  co-ordinations.  But  Butler  cannot  explain  the 
matter  at  all.  These  two  considerations  partly  explain  why,  after  the  time 
of  Butler,  the  old  attempts  to  effect  a  reconciliation  by  means  of  a  moral 
sense  and  moral  sentiments  continued. 

B.  PRICE 

Price  represents  another  step  in  the  direction  of  intellectualizing  moral 
conduct.  Not  only  the  recognition  of  the  content  and  authority  of  morality, 
as  with  Butler,  but  also  to  a  large  extent  its  motivation,  is  due  to  the  intel¬ 
lectual  part  of  our  nature,  while  pleasure  and  feeling  occupy  a  distinctly 
subordinate  position. 

Reviving  the  doctrine  of  Cudworth  and  Clarke,  Price  proclaims  moral 
laws  to  be  “rational,”  “immutable,”  “eternal,”  and  “existing  in  the  very 
nature  of  things;”  and  he  further  says  that  our  intellect  intuitively  recog¬ 
nizes  them  to  be  such.2  Since  the  moral  rectitude  of  an  action  is  absolute 
and  unvarying,  it  is  wholly  different  from  pleasure  and  pain,  which  admit 
of  variations.3  “Morality  is  eternal  and  immutable.  Right  and  wrong 
denote  what  actions  are.”4  Thus  far,  pleasure  and  pain  seem  to  be 
indeterminate  phenomena  which  are  capable  of  variations,  and  are  of 

1  Sermons ,  Preface,  p.  1 1 . 

2  A  Review  of  the  Principal  Questions  in  Morals ,  69,  158  f.,  170,  etc. 

3  Ibid.,  70.  4  Ibid.,  74;  cf.  p.  98. 


46 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


little  moral  worth.  Action  should  be  wholly  discerned  and  motived  by 
the  intellect.  And  such  is  the  ideal  state,  with  Price.1  Unfortunately, 
however,  the  human  reason  is  still  in  its  infancy,  and  is  too  weak  of  itself 
always  to  enforce  its  injunctions.  It  can  do  so  to  some  extent,  to  be  sure, 
and  as  man  advances,  its  ability  increases,  and  the  assistance  of  feelings 
is  rendered  unnecessary.2 

At  present,  however,  the  reason  needs  to  be  reinforced  by  “instinctive 
determinations.”3  These  are  largely,  though  not  wholly,  impulses  of 
pleasure  and  pain.  Following  Butler,  he  shows  that  many  of  our  impulses 
are  as  much  opposed  to  individual  happiness  as  they  are  to  morality.4  But, 
in  the  main,  he  looks  to  feelings  of  pleasure  to  reinforce  the  intuitive  per¬ 
ceptions  of  the  intellect.  It  is  a  wise  provision  of  Providence,  on  account 
of  the  weakness  of  our  reason,  to  cause  our  moral  perceptions  to  be  accom¬ 
panied  by  feelings  of  pleasure.  We  cannot  perceive  moral  order  or  virtue 
without  feelings  of  pleasure  and  approbation,  nor  the  reverse  without 
the  opposite  feelings.5  Moral  self-approbation  is  the  largest  source  of 
our  private  happiness.6  Consequently,  in  human  beings  moral  action 
is  a  result  both  of  an  intellectual  perception  and  of  a  feeling  of  pleasure, 
and  it  is  difficult  to  decide  which  influence  actuallv  is  the  more  decisive.7 

To  give  us  confidence  in  the  affective  reinforcement  of  moral  motives, 
Price  goes  on  to  assure  us  that  the  desire  for  pleasure  and  aversion  to  pain 
also  “exist  in  the  very  nature  of  things,”  and  no  power  whatever  can 
prevent  a  creature  from  desiring  his  own  happiness.8  This  laudation  of 
pleasure  and  happiness  is  hardly  in  accord  with  his  original  depreca¬ 
tion  of  the  feelings  in  morality,  but  it  seems  clear  that  he  wishes  to  give 
the  feelings  a  functional  part  in  reinforcing  the  moral  intuitions  and 
judgments  of  the  intellect.  In  doing  this,  he  fails  to  make  a  clear 
psychological  distinction  between  the  work  of  intellect  and  that  of  feeling. 
Bofh  seem  to  aid  to  some  extent  in  moral  perceptions,  and  both  seem  to 
have  some  degree  of  motive  power. 

Price’s  account  doubtless  seemed  to  give  to  morality  a  more  substan¬ 
tial  foundation  than  that  of  Butler,  which  rested  it  upon  a  rational  faculty. 
It  is  instead  asserted  to  be  perceived  intuitively  to  exist  in  the  very  nature 
of  objective  reality,  and  thus  has  greater  necessity  and  unqualified  validity. 
It  is  no  longer  dependent  upon  feeling  for  all  of  its  motivation.  The 
weakness  in  the  account,  of  course,  is  that  the  intuitionist  had  no  answer 

1  A  Review  of  the  Principal  Questions  in  Morals,  315,  339. 

2  Ibid.,  121  f.  s  Ibid.,  90  f.  7  Ibid.,  95-97. 

3  Ibid.,  95  f.  6  Ibid.,  92.  8  Ibid.,  no. 

4  Ibid.,  118-21. 


THE  BRITISH  NON-HEDONISTS 


47 


for  the  man  who  steadfastly  denies  that  he  has  any  such  intuitions  of  an 
eternal  and  immutable  morality,  or  gives  wrong  content  to  it;  whereas 
Butler  could  meet  such  a  man  with  rational  arguments. 

C.  REID 

Reid’s  attention  was  mainly  given  to  the  intellectual  and  volitional 
aspects  of  consciousness.  Our  problem  was  not  prominent  in  his  mind, 
and  what  little  space  we  find  devoted  to  it  indicates  slight  advance  upon 
the  arguments  of  Butler.  Besides  numerous  impulses  and  instincts  (in 
the  analysis  of  which  in  fuller  detail  he  represents  a  genuine  advance), 
he  distinguishes  two  regulative  principles  governing  conduct — duty,  and 
the  desire  for  one’s  “good  on  the  whole.”  This  latter  consists  of  happi¬ 
ness  and  perfection.  By  perfection,  however,  he  seems  to  mean  nothing 
very  different  from  happiness,  so  far  as  we  can  judge  from  his  illustrations, 
and  it  seems  safe  to  conclude  that  the  desire  for  good  on  the  whole  is  prac¬ 
tically  synonymous  with  Butler’s  self-love.1  This  with  Reid  also  is  an 
inevitable  spring  of  action,  and  the  argument  goes  to  show  that  it  can 
be  most  surely  obtained  by  obedience  to  duty. 

The  advantages  in  favor  of  this  course  are  similar  to  those  mentioned 
by  Butler.  The  road  to  duty  is  plain,  while  that  to  happiness  is  “dark 
and  intricate,  full  of  snares  and  dangers,  and  therefore  not  to  be  trodden 
without  fear,  and  care,  and  perplexity.”2  Another  point  in  favor  of 
duty  is  the  old  idea  of  Shaftesbury  and  Hutcheson  of  the  pleasures  of  the 
moral  sense.  The  sight  of  others  performing  their  duty  affords  us  pleasure, 
while  the  highest  pleasure  of  all  is  consciousness  of  good  conduct  in  our¬ 
selves,  which  is  the  occasion  of  the  most  intense  and  permanent  happiness 
of  any  thing  in  the  world.3  In  Reid,  however,  we  perhaps  have  a  stronger 
feeling  of  the  authority  and  extent  of  duty  than  had  hitherto  been  expressed, 
and  a  more  painful  consciousness  of  the  dilemma  which  must  face  a  man 
until  he  has  become  convinced  that  duty  coincides  with  his  good  upon  the 
whole,  and  that  this  latter  can  be  obtained  through  it.4 

1  Cf.  Sidgwick,  History  of  Ethics,  228. 

2  Essays  on  the  Active  Powers  (ed.  1788),  226. 

3  Ibid.,  248. 

4  Beattie,  whose  Elements  of  Moral  Science  appeared  two  years  after  Reid’s 
Essays  on  the  Active  Powers,  employs  a  sort  of  deductive  hedonism  to  prove  the  imme¬ 
diate  coincidence  of  happiness  and  virtue.  The  pleasures  of  the  moral  sense  excel 
all  others  in  dignity,  intensity,  and  durability,  in  being  always  obtainable  and  most 
agreeable  to  our  whole  nature;  and,  therefore,  happiness,  or  the  most  comprehensive 
gratification  of  which  our  propensities  are  capable,  is  identical  with  virtue. 


48 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


D.  DUGALD  STEWART 

Stewart  attributes  the  source  of  moral  action  to  the  moral  faculty, 
which,  though  it  can  be  improved  by  education  and  association,1  he  takes 
great  pains  to  show  is  one  of  the  original  elements  of  our  nature.  For 
this  reason  he  is  free  from  the  tendency  to  narrow  the  content  of  moral 
obligation  which  has  been  noted  in  the  case  of  some  other  writers  who 
employed  the  doctrine  of  association.  He  does  not  have  to  derive  the 
whole  material  of  duty  from  elements  which  are  originally  not  moral.  In 
moral  judgments  three  elements  are  present:  the  perception  of  the  act  as 
right  or  wrong;  a  feeling  of  pleasure  or  pain,  varying  in  degree  according 
to  the  acuteness  of  our  moral  sensibility;  and  a  perception  of  the  merit 
or  demerit  of  the  agent  (whether  one’s  self  or  someone  else).2 

The  prime  spring  to  action  must  be  found  in  the  moral  faculty  itself. 
The  very  notion  of  virtue  or  duty  implies  obligation.3  How  the  motive 
to  action  can  arise  directly  from  this  moral  judgment  is,  one  supposes, 
explainable  from  the  affective  element  present  in  it.  This  element  is  also 
reinforced  by  other  principles  which  obviously  contain  feeling  elements, 
of  which  he  mentions  five:  a  regard  to  character,  sympathy,  a  sense  of 
the  ridiculous,  taste,  and  self-love.  But  none  of  these  may  be  permitted 
to  usurp  the  supremacy  of  the  moral  faculty  as  the  ruling  motive  to  action; 
they  must  simply  co-operate  with  it  as  subordinate  incentives.4  While 
admitting  as  unqualifiedly  as  Butler  the  supremacy  of  self-love  as  the 
necessary  motive  to  action  inseparable  from  our  nature  as  rational  and 
sensitive  beings,5  Stewart  seeks  in  this  way  to  show  that  there  are  large 
sources  of  pleasure  attending  moral  action  and  reinforcing  it. 

Stewart  does  not  attempt  to  define  pleasure,  which  he  apparently 
regards  as  one  of  the  unanalyzable  elements  of  experience.  Happiness 
has  for  its  prerequisite  “the  general  habit  or  state  of  mind  that  is  necessary 
to  lay  a  groundwork  for  every  other  enjoyment.”  This  foundation,  he 
attempts  to  show,  is  obtained  by  “doing  our  duty,  with  as  little  solicitude 
about  the  event,  as  is  consistent  with  the  weakness  of  humanity.  ”6  This 
foundation  being  presupposed,  “the  sum  of  happiness  enjoyed  by  an 
individual  will  be  the  degree  in  which  he  is  able  to  secure  the  various 
pleasures  belonging  to  our  nature.” 

In  the  enumeration  of  our  duties,  he  makes  it  a  duty  to  ourselves  to 
seek  our  happiness,  and  this  is  subordinate  only  to  our  duties  to  God  and 

1  Works ,  ed.  by  Hamilton  (Edinburgh,  1877),  VI,  235  ff. 

2  Ibid.,  VI,  24.  5  Ibid.,  VI,  212-14. 

3  Ibid.,  VI,  35  f.,  41.  6  ibid.,  VI,  102  f.;  VII,  349. 

4  Ibid.,  VI,  35  f.,  41. 


THE  BRITISH  NON-HEDONISTS 


49 


to  our  fellow-men,  and  to  be  followed  whenever  these  other  actions  do  not 
prohibit  it.  Stewart  thus  seeks  to  reduce  in  every  way  the  divergence 
between  duty  and  happiness.  To  a  large  extent  it  is  a  pleasure  to  do 
one’s  duty,  and  a  duty  to  seek  one’s  pleasure.  But,  minimize  the  differ¬ 
ences  as  much  as  he  can,  Stewart  is  obliged  to  admit  that  there  is  a  wide 
margin  of  doubtful  territory  left,  at  least  for  the  plain  man,  who  cannot, 
by  the  mere  guidance  of  common  sense,  unsupported  by  philosophical 
arguments,  see  the  ultimate  harmony  between  happiness  and  duty.1 

Stewart  thus  represents  some  advance  in  insisting  that  the  moral 
faculty  must  furnish  the  ruling  motive  in  moral  action;  he  also  shows 
that  the  divergence  between  duty  and  happiness  is  less  than  might  be 
generally  supposed;  but  in  the  end,  since  he  supposes  that  pleasure  must 
be  the  inevitable  end  of  action,  the  philosophical  arguments  of  Butler 
become  necessary  to  secure  moral  motivation. 

E.  THOMAS  BROWN 

An  important  advance  in  the  line  of  development  now  under  considera¬ 
tion  was  taken  by  Brown.  As  early  as  Butler,  the  initial  springs  to  action 
were  seen  not  to  be  immediately  directed  toward  pleasure  and  happiness. 
But  both  Butler  and  the  Scottish  writers  who  had  taken  up  his  arguments 
had  taken  it  for  granted  that  when  action  is  deliberate  it  must  always 
be  directed  in  the  interests  of  the  individual.  Their  problem  had  accord¬ 
ingly  been  to  effect  a  reconciliation  of  morality  with  happiness,  in  order 
to  secure  its  motivation. 

Brown,  however,  sees  no  reason  to  suppose  that  individual  action  is 
always  directed  by  the  desire  for  happiness,  even  when  it  is  reflective. 
He  distinguishes  ten  distinct  desires  in  our  nature,  only  one  of  which  is 
directly  for  pleasure  as  such,  and  it  is  by  no  means  the  most  important 
of  the  ten.2  The  realization  of  any  of  these  other  desires  of  course  affords 
pleasure,  but  it  is  not  for  the  sake  of  the  pleasure  that  it  is  desired.  Pleas¬ 
ure  follows  the  expression  of  an  emotion,  instead  of  being  its  cause.3  It 
is  the  very  nature  of  our  minds  that  some  objects  should  appear  to  it 
immediately  desirable,  and  in  consequence  pleasure  arises  from  their 
attainment.4 

In  his  psychology  of  ethics  we  must  therefore  credit  Brown  with  a 
clearer  discernment  of  the  relationships  of  desire  and  pleasure  than  any 
of  his  predecessors.  He  frankly  says  that  the  very  idea  of  pleasure  and 

1  Ibid.,  VI,  21. 

2  Philosophy  of  Mind  (Edinburgh  ed.,  1851),  III,  325  ff. 

3  Ibid.,  Ill,  345-50.  4  Ibid.,  Ill,  348. 


5o 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


happiness  almost  involves  their  desire;1  but  he  perceives  this  is  rather 
because  these  expressions  are  the  general  descriptions  of  the  objects  which 
we  desire,  than  because  in  the  generality  of  cases  we  desire  them  for  their 
own  sakes.  The  fallacies  of  hedonism,  which  Butler  had  sufficiently 
exposed  to  show  that  pleasure  is  not  the  immediate  object  of  impulsive 
desires,  Brown  seems  to  have  developed  far  enough  in  his  own  mind  to 
lead  him  to  conclude  that  happiness  is  not  the  object  of  deliberate  action, 
except  so  far  as  by  it  we  merely  mean  the  attainment  of  our  ends.  It  is 
only  on  this  supposition  that  we  can  interpret  this  concession  to  happiness, 
and  at  the  same  time  his  insistence  that  other  considerations,  such  as 
moral  excellence  and  our  own  self-approbation  and  that  of  God,  are  of 
more  value  to  us  than  our  own  happiness,  interpreting  the  last  word  in 
its  usual  British  sense  of  a  state  of  continuous  pleasurable  enjoyment.2 

Brown  is,  accordingly,  able  to  say  frankly  that  duty  and  happiness, 
though  they  may  ultimately  coincide,  owing  to  “the  gratuitous  goodness 
of  Heaven,”  are  yet,  “with  reference  to  our  will  or  moral  choice,  distinct 
objects.”2  The  argument  of  Butler,  as  we  have  seen,  really  afforded  no 
refuge  for  the  plain  man,  who  could  not  follow  the  intricate  argument  of 
the  Analogy ,  and  become  convinced  that  he  would  most  surely  obtain 
his  happiness  by  obeying  his  conscience.  Brown,  on  the  other  hand, 
frankly  confesses  that  in  the  moral  act  these  two  considerations  may  be 
diametrically  opposed,  and  yet  the  choice  be  made  in  the  interests  of 
moral  excellence. 

At  the  same  time,  Brown  freely  recognizes  that  pleasure  is  a  good, 
even  for  its  own  sake,  and  it  is  actually  a  duty  to  seek  it  when  it  does  not 
conflict  with  higher  moral  claims.3  But  in  the  event  when  it  does,  his 
faith  in  human  nature  is  sufficiently  strong  for  him  to  believe  that  the 
decision  will  usually  be  made  in  the  right  direction. 

Brown,  as  well  as  Stewart,  made  a  large  use  of  the  principle  of  asso¬ 
ciation  in  his  psychology  of  ethics.  An  action  is  not  only  attended  with 
the  emotion  which  it  originally  excited,  but  also  with  emotions  associated 
with  the  class  of  actions  to  which  it  belongs.  Thus  the  fact  that  an  action 
is  unjust  evokes  a  greater  emotional  response  than  the  action  in  itself 
would  effect.  Association  therefore  increases  the  affective  response  in 
manners  sometimes  favorable  to  moral  action,  and  sometimes  in  a  manner 
that  obscures  and  beclouds  real  moral  issues.4  Association  does  not, 
however,  at  all  explain  the  origin  of  moral  perceptions  in  the  first  place; 
these  are  due  to  as  genuinely  elemental  constituents  in  our  nature  as  any 

1  Op.  cit.,  Ill,  340.  3  Ibid.,  XCIX,  esp.  415,  472,  481. 

^  Ibid.,  IV,  455.  4  Ibid.,  Ill,  518-21. 


THE  BRITISH  NON-HEDONISTS 


5i 


other  kind  of  perceptions.  This  being  the  case,  the  result  of  associa- 
tionism  in  Brown  is  not  at  all  to  narrow  the  range  of  morality  or  weaken 
its  authority. 

F.  LATER  INTUITIONISTS 

Mackintosh  criticises  Stewart  and  Reid  for  insisting  upon  the  original 
nature  of  the  moral  faculty  and  conscience,  and  refusing  to  derive  them 
by  association.  His  own  proposition  so  to  derive  them  is  not,  however, 
ethically  objectionable,  as  he  does  not  wish  to  derive  them  from  the  pleas¬ 
ures  of  self-love,  as  Hartley  had  done,  but  to  derive  both  alike  from  com¬ 
mon  sources.  The  advantage  that  would  be  gained  by  this  extension 
of  association  wrould  be  in  the  interests  of  simplicity,  as  it  would  not  assume 
so  many  original  constituents  in  the  human  mind.  In  this  respect,  with¬ 
out  sacrificing  any  ethical  advantage,  Mackintosh  seems  to  represent  a 
spirit  more  in  accordance  with  modern  psychology,  especially  as  his  pres¬ 
entation  of  associationism  is  free  from  many  of  the  crudenesses  of  his 
contemporaries.1 

In  some  respects  the  two  most  eminent  French  exponents  of  intuition - 
ism  seem  to  represent  a  position  prior  rather  than  subsequent  to  Brown. 
Cousin  presents  the  same  arguments  as  Reid  and  Stewart,  though  perhaps 
with  a  larger  recognition  of  the  importance  of  feeling  in  moral  action, 
and  with  an  assurance  of  the  ultimate  reward  of  moral  action  by  happi¬ 
ness  which  has  been  fortified  by  an  acquaintance  with  Kant.2  Jouffroy 
seems  to  believe  in  a  closer  identity  between  moral  and  pleasurable  action ; 
he  does  not  concede  so  large  a  divergence  in  this  life,  and  is  inclined  to 
think  that  they  can,  usually  at  least,  be  shown  to  be  immediately  har~ 
monious.3  Both  present  the  arguments  with  greater  fervor  and  eloquence 
than  the  Scottish  writers,  and  introduce  aesthetic  considerations  more 
largely. 

British  intuitionists  after  Brown  no  longer  seek  to  reconcile  moral 
obligations  with  the  supposed  demands  of  self-love.  The  claim  that  all 
our  deliberate  action  is  actuated  by  considerations  of  self-love  is  no  longer 
admitted,  and  little  positive  use  of  pleasure  is  made  by  them.  They 
usually  analyze  human  conduct  into  a  variety  of  impulses,  propensions, 
affections,  and  other  springs  to  action,  in  which  feelings  of  pleasure  and 
happiness  are  of  course  involved;  but  as  these  furnish  neither  the  cri- 

1  Progress  0}  Ethical  Philosophy,  ed.  by  Whewell,  238  f.,  241-66;  cf.  Preface  (by 
Whewell),  xxxix  ff. 

2  Lectures  on  the  True,  the  Beautiful,  and  the  Good,  trans.  by  O.  W.  Wight,  esp. 
255"57»  262,  281,  284,  296  ff. 

3  Melanges  philo so phiques  (Ed.  Paris,  1866),  esp.  284-93. 


52 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


terion  nor  motive  to  action,  they  are  not  of  consequence  for  ethical  pur¬ 
poses.  Frequently,  to  be  sure,  the  assertion  is  made  that  moral  action 
affords  the  most  happiness  to  man;  but  this  serves  simply  as  a  sort  of 
corollary  to  the  main  arguments. 

Whewell,  to  be  sure,  concedes  that  happiness  must  ultimately  coincide 
with  duty,  in  a  way  that  at  first  reminds  one  of  the  old  attitude;  but  we 
soon  discover  that  the  happiness  of  which  he  speaks  is  a  general  satis¬ 
faction  of  all  our  desires,  and  not  a  happiness  of  continued  pleasurable 
enjoyment  as  such;  and  so  the  term  has  no  specific  content  that  will  enable 
it  to  serve  either  as  motive  or  as  criterion  for  moral  action.1 

Martineau,  after  the  controversy  between  intuitionism  and  utilitari¬ 
anism  had  been  waging  for  half  a  century,  makes  an  interesting  conces¬ 
sion.  In  his  doctrine  pleasure  is  made  to  be  a  consequence  of  the  satis¬ 
faction  of  a  propensity,  and  thus  he  can  agree  that  a  calculation  of  pleasures 
is  a  calculation  of  the  consequences  of  actions.  Moral  approbation  is 
not,  of  course,  to  be  determined  by  an  estimation  of  consequences,  but 
by  the  comparative  evaluation  of  propensities  to  action.  He  admits, 
however,  that  after  the  moral  criterion  for  determining  the  right  in  an 
action  has  thus  been  applied,  one  must  be  guided  by  consequences  in 
selecting  the  means  for  carrying  out  an  act;  and  in  the  selection  of  means 
considerations  of  pleasure  have  a  legitimate  place.2  He  gives  no  illus¬ 
trations,  and  just  how  he  intended  the  two  principles  to  work  together 
in  practice  it  is  hard  to  see.  It  seems  to  be  a  tacit  confession  that  later 
intuitionism,  in  its  complete  ignoring  of  the  position  of  pleasure  in  moral 
action,  has  been  unable  to  work  out  the  applications  of  its  theory  to  imme¬ 
diate  conduct  satisfactorily,  and  that  it  must  look  to  considerations  of 
pleasure  for  assistance  in  selecting  the  materials  upon  which  its  propensions 
are  to  be  exercised. 

1  Elements  of  Morality ,  241. 

2  Types  of  Ethical  Theory,  II,  275. 


IV.  MODIFIED  PERFECTIONISM 


To  the  earlier  perfectionists  perfection  was  the  summum  bonum,  as 
we  have  seen,  and  pleasure  and  happiness  were  defined  in  terms  of  per¬ 
fection.  The  mathematical  method  had  been  responsible  to  a  considerable 
extent  for  preserving  the  harmony  between  these  ideas,  at  the  cost  of 
arresting  their  further  development. 

After  the  time  of  Wolff,  however,  new  tendencies  began  to  appear  in 
Germany,  due  probably  to  the  general  movement  of  the  eighteenth  cen¬ 
tury.  Individual  happiness  and  welfare  came  to  appear  of  more  impor¬ 
tance  to  the  minds  of  men;  and  if  the  sterner  aspects  of  the  age  of  Fred¬ 
erick  the  Great  seem  to  have  played  the  principal  part  in  molding  the 
thought  and  character  of  Kant,  some  of  his  contemporaries  were  more 
strongly  affected  by  the  hedonistic  tendencies  then  prevalent  in  France 
and  England.  It  was  an  age  when  too  lofty  ideals  were  no  longer  in 
vogue,  when  men  cared  more  for  material  ease  and  enjoyment,  and  the 
assurance  of  these  became  a  concern  of  importance.  To  be  sure,  this 
tendency  was  less  strong  in  Germany  than  in  France,  but  the  altered 
attitude  reveals  itself  in  a  milder  way.  It  was  a  great  age  for  psychological 
introspection;  diaries,  journals,  and  memoirs  were  abundant.  ^Esthetics 
was  a  favorite  field  of  inquiry,  and  the  psychology  of  pleasure,  especially 
upon  the  aesthetic  side,  received  an  amount  of  attention  sharply  in  contrast 
with  an  earlier  age.  A  prominent  subject  of  interest  in  metaphysics  was 
furnished  by  questions  as  to  the  assurance  of  God,  freedom,  and  immortal¬ 
ity;  this  interest  not  being  due  to  a  taste  for  philosophical  speculation 
as  such,  but  on  account  of  their  bearing  upon  man’s  present  well-being 
and  future  happiness. 

A.  MENDELSSOHN 

Mendelssohn,  as  contrasted  with  Wolff,  evidences  this  change  in  inter¬ 
est.  Although  still  a  perfectionist,  maintaining  theoretically  the  old  com¬ 
bination  of  perfection,  pleasure,  and  happiness,  the  center  of  gravity  in 
his  system  has  changed,  and  the  feelings  come  in  for  the  principal  analy¬ 
sis.  The  implication  is  that,  since  feelings  are  perceptions  of  perfection, 
it  is  through  their  guidance  that  we  are  to  look  for  perfection.  Conse¬ 
quently,  Mendelssohn  does  not  approach  ethics  by  the  way  of  “rational 
thoughts,”  but  by  a  direct  study  of  the  feelings  and  sensations. 

He  corrects  two  important  defects  in  Wolff’s  definition  of  pleasure 


53 


54 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


which  had  stood  in  the  way  of  its  more  extended  use  for  ethical  purposes. 
Wolff  had  limited  pleasure  to  confused  concepts,  and  to  the  sensibility. 
Mendelssohn  shows  that  pleasure  attends  clear  concepts  as  well,  and 
that  the  increased  discrimination  which  reasoning  affords  furnishes  in¬ 
creased  pleasure,  especially  of  an  aesthetic  sort.1  Wolff  had  not  distin¬ 
guished  the  subjective  and  objective  elements  present  in  pleasure.  He 
apparently  treated  feelings  of  pleasure  in  much  the  same  way  as  sensa¬ 
tions  of  color,  light,  and  sound.  These  all  have  reference  to  something 
external,  and  so  does  pleasure.  Mendelssohn,  on  the  other  hand,  dis¬ 
tinguishes  two  elements  in  pleasure:  (i)  the  pleasure  of  perceiving  per¬ 
fection  in  the  object;  (2)  the  pleasure  involved  in  one’s  personal  perfec¬ 
tion;  and,  of  course,  pain  in  one’s  own  imperfection.  In  perceiving  a 
good,  both  kinds  of  pleasure  are  experienced,  due  to  the  excellence  of 
the  object  and  that  of  one ’s  own  perceptual  activity.  But  in  the  perception 
of  an  evil  object  pain  is  felt  only  in  the  first  of  these  ways.  The  object 
is  perceived  to  be  imperfect;  but  the  efficiency  of  one’s  mental  activity 
in  perceiving  it  affords  one  pleasure,  and  we  should  upon  no  account 
wish  not  to  be  able  to  perceive  this  imperfection.  But  if  the  imperfection 
is  in  one’s  self,  the  evil  perceived  is  altogether  painful,  and  one  had  rather 
not  have  it  than  have  it.2  This  separation  of  the  subjective,  personal 
side  of  perfection  and  pleasure  is,  of  course,  of  supreme  importance  to  a 
writer  who  wishes  to  employ  the  feelings  as  a  guide  in  conduct. 

His  study  of  Shaftesbury,  which  doubtless  encouraged  him  to  give 
increased  prominence  to  feeling  in  moral  action,  also  led  him  to  notice  the 
problem  of  the  harmonization  of  self-love  and  benevolence.3  The  iden¬ 
tification  of  happiness  and  perfection  has  been  so  complete  that  he  can 
say  that  happiness  is  the  final  aim  of  all  our  wishes.  This  desire  for 
happiness  is  immediate  in  self-love,  and  mediate  in  our  love  for  others. 
Self-love  necessitates  the  love  for  others,  since  there  can  be  no  pleasure 
without  an  extrinsic  object  of  enjoyment.4 

Since  this  problem,  serious  for  British  ethics,  is  thus  readily  solved 
to  his  satisfaction,  he  devotes  his  attention  mainly  to  a  characteristic 
rationalistic  problem,  viz.:  the  proper  co-ordination  of  the  emotions 

1  Schriften  (ed.  Leipzig,  1843),  I,  n8£f. 

2  Ibid.,  I,  239  f. 

3  Mendelssohn ’s  relationship  to  English  writers,  as  well  as  that  of  other  writers 
with  whom  we  have  here  to  deal,  is  fully  treated  by  G.  Zart,  Der  Einfluss  der  engli- 
schen  Philosophen  auf  die  deutsche  Philosophen  des  XVIII.  Jahrhunderts.  (Berlin, 
1881.) 

4  Schriften,  III,  409. 


MODIFIED  PERFECTIONISM 


55 


with  the  reason.  The  latter  discerns  good  clearly  and  distinctly,  but  the 
pleasure  attending  its  operation  often  has  not  the  force  and  vivacity  which 
the  emotions  of  the  confused  sensibility  have.  Reason  is,  to  be  sure, 
more  convincing,  but  the  sensibility  is  always  with  us,  and  presents  a 
larger  quantity  of  characteristics  more  quickly  and  forcibly. 1  The  moral 
desideratum  is  therefore  to  dissolve  feelings  into  rational  inferences,  and 
to  make  sentient  the  operations  of  the  reason.2 

His  presentation,  though  not  developed  by  him  into  a  system  of  morals, 
would  apparently  have  afforded  more  room  for  the  development  of  the 
social  side,  in  consequence  of  his  use  of  benevolence,  than  was  the  case 
with  his  continental  predecessors;  while  his  distinction  between  sub¬ 
jective  and  objective  feeling  would  give  a  better  working  criterion  than 
many  of  the  English  writers  had.  These  possibilities  are,  of  course,  due 
to  his  breaking  away  to  some  extent  from  the  limitations  of  the  conception 
of  perfection,  and  in  throwing  the  emphasis  upon  feeling  instead.  How¬ 
ever,  his  attempt  to  derive  social  pleasures  from  those  of  self-love  would 
have  worked  disastrously,  as  we  have  observed  in  the  case  of  British 
writers. 

B.  TETENS  AND  SCHMIDT 

The  changed  interests  of  the  time  are  exemplified  in  such  a  writer 
as  Tetens,  whose  Philosophische  Versuche  is  mainly  occupied  with  psycho¬ 
logical  topics.  Upon  the  moral  side,  however,  he  concludes  his  work 
with  considerations  upon  the  perfectibility  of  man,  and  how  far  this  accords 
with  his  happiness.  He  concludes  that  the  perfecting  of  man’s  nature 
affords  larger  possibilities  of  pleasure  and  happiness,  but  whether  these 
shall  become  actualities  depends  largely  upon  external  circumstances. 
Man  experiences  the  most  pleasure  when  enabled  to  exercise  his  perfected 
capacities  in  the  degree  for  which  they  are  best  fitted.3  We  cannot  always 
be  sure  that  external  circumstances  will  afford  this  exercise  of  increased 
perfection  and  consequent  happiness.4  So  it  is  only  in  a  general  way 
that  man’s  increased  perfection  and  happiness  run  parallel.5  The  initial 
impulse  in  man  is  toward  the  immediately  agreeable,  and  only  to  a  limited 
extent  toward  happiness,  where  this  is  not  in  accordance  with  immediate 
pleasure,  and  still  less  toward  perfection.6  Thus  with  Tetens  the  old 
co-ordination  between  happiness  and  perfection  has  broken  down;  only 
a  general  parallel  can  be  shown.  The  only  possibility  of  reconciling  the 
exceptions  would  be  the  assumption  of  a  future  life.7 

1  Ibid.,  I,  216  ff.  2  Ibid.,  Ill,  412. 

3  Philosophische  Versuche  (Leipzig,  1777),  II,  809  f.,  815. 

4  Ibid.,  816  ff.  6  Ibid.,  8235.  s  Ibid.,  820. 


7  Ibid.,  818,  833  f. 


56 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


The  entire  subordination  of  perfection  to  pleasure  and  happiness  in 
the  case  of  a  writer  who  still  has  a  firm  belief  in  their  immediate  coin¬ 
cidence  is  apparently  furnished  by  the  Geschichte  des  Selbstgejuhls  of 
Michael  Ignaz  Schmidt.1  The  only  good  is  pleasure;  this  is  conscious¬ 
ness  of  one’s  own  perfection,  and  beauty  and  goodness  are  both  inferred 
from  such  feelings.  Self-love  is  the  primal  impulse  to  activity,  which  it 
initiates  in  the  interests  of  pleasure,  and  pronounces  things  to  be  good, 
perfect,  and  beautiful  if  they  agree  with  it. 

1  For  an  account  of  this  work  I  have  been  obliged  to  depend  upon  Dr.  Max  Dessoir, 
Geschichte  der  Psychologies  I,  271-75  (ed.  of  1894);  I,  437  b  (ed.  of  1902.) 


V.  KANT 


In  Kant’s  own  intellectual  development  we  witness  the  same  tendencies 
which  were  going  on  in  the  minds  of  others,  and  which  characterized  the 
period  just  treated.  Bred  in  the  Wolffian  perfectionism,  Kant  came  to 
see  its  inadequacies.  Its  narrow  moral  ideal  lacked  a  sufficient  social 
content  and  failed  to  recognize  duty  as  a  moral  imperative,  while  it  naively 
attempted  to  identify  pleasure,  or  at  least  happiness,  with  perfection. 
On  the  other  hand,  Kant’s  logical  rationalistic  training  and  his  strong 
sense  of  duty  led  him  to  detect  the  inevitable  instability  and  irrespon¬ 
sibility  of  an  ethics  grounded  wholly  upon  feeling.  He  long  tried  to 
mediate  between  the  two  systems,  retaining  what  was  good  in  both;  but 
he  finally  worked  out  an  independent  system  of  his  own,  quite  different 
from  either.1 

A.  THE  EARLY  RATIONALISTIC  PERIOD 

In  Kant’s  early  treatises,  written  prior  to  1760,  his  attitude  is  thor¬ 
oughly  Wolffian.  He  believes  that  the  moral  life  must  be  founded  upon 
a  rational  basis.  Man  must  be  raised  to  domination  over  the  changing 
and  varying  movements  of  the  sensibility  governed  by  its  pleasures  and 
pains,  by  means  of  the  clear  insight  of  the  reason. 

Three  other  influences  which  tended  to  reinforce  him  in  his  rational¬ 
istic  position  may  be  noticed.  (1)  The  religion  of  his  parents  was  that 
of  the  Pietists — a  stern  sect  who  believed  that  sensuous  impulses  of  all 
kinds  must  be  severely  held  in  leash  in  order  to  please  God.  (2)  His  own 
weak  and  sickly  body  had  to  be  kept  in  the  most  careful  subjection;  and 
thus  in  his  own  experience  the  opposition  between  sensibility  and  reason 
was  painfully  real.  (3)  The  national  condition  was  such  that  all  must 

1  In  the  discussion  of  Kant  I  am  mainly  indebted  to  Dr.  Paul  Menzer,  Der  Ent- 
wicklung  der  Kantischen  Ethik  in  den  Jahren  1760  bis  1785  (republished  in  the  Kant- 
Studien,  II  and  III) ;  Dr.  August  Messer,  Kants  Ethik  (Leipzig,  1904) ;  Dr.  A.  Heg- 
ler,  Die  Psychologie  in  Kants  Ethik  (Freiburg  i.  B.,  1891);  and  Dr.  Fr.  W.  Foerster, 
Der  Entwicklunsgang  der  Kantischen  Ethik  bis  zur  Kritik  der  reinen  Vernunft  (Berlin, 
(1894).  The  comprehensive  treatment  of  Dr.  Axel  Hagerstrom,  Kants  Ethik  (Upsala  u. 
Leipzig,  1902),  did  not  attract  my  attention  until  too  late  to  be  greatly  available. 

Abbreviations  are:  H.  =  Hartenstein ’s  edition  of  Kant’s  Werke;  G.  S.  —  the  new 
Gesammte  Schriften  (Berlin,  1902 — );  M.  =Max  Muller’s  translation  of  the  Critique 
of  Pure  Reason,  the  one-volume  edition;  A.  =the  translations  in  Abbott’s  Kant’s 
Theory  of  Ethics.  Quotations  are  usually  made  from  the  translations  of  Kant’s 
works,  where  such  exist. 


57 


58 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


be  prepared  to  sacrifice  personal  convenience  and  wealth  to  the  good  of 
the  state;  and  Frederick  the  Great,  the  “philosopher  of  Sans  Souci,” 
himself  the  advocate  of  a  duty  philsosphy,  set  the  example,  and  was  not 
slow  to  require  others  to  follow  it.1 

Thus  a  stern  religious  training,  a  narrow  regimen  demanded  by  his 
personal  state  of  health,  and  a  rigorous  government,  all  reinforced 
the  opposition  set  up  by  the  Wolffian  philosophy  between  the  reason 
and  the  sensibility,  and  the  necessity  of  governing  life  by  the  former. 

B.  THE  PERIOD  OF  ENGLISH  INFLUENCE 

During  the  second  decade  of  his  literary  activity — led,  no  doubt, 
by  the  inadequacies  of  Wolffian  perfectionism — Kant  sought  to  utilize 
the  feelings  in  working  out  a  satisfactory  moral  statement.  He  accord¬ 
ingly  made  a  study  of  at  least  three  of  the  British  writers  who  grounded 
morality  upon  feeling — viz.,  Shaftesbury,  Hutcheson,  and  Hume — as 
well  as  of  Rousseau. 

In  the  prize  essay  on  Natural  Theology  and  Morals ,  wrritten  in  1762  or 
1763,  we  find  the  new  ideas  of  a  feeling  morality  struggling  with  the  old 
perfectionist  conceptions  for  the  mastery.  He  believes  that  the  whole 
content  of  morality  is  due  to  feelings  of  pleasure  and  pain.  These  feelings 
may  be  analyzed  into  several  principal  “sensations  of  good,”  from  which 
arise  higher,  but  not  further  reducible,  judgments  which  declare  this  or 
that  to  be  good.  Thus,  “Love  him  who  loves  you,”  is  an  indemonstrable 
material  principle  of  obligation. 

However,  the  feelings  furnish  no  central  principle  of  morality,  and 
leave  it  in  too  indeterminate  a  character.  Consequently,  the  material 
principles  of  morality,  derived  from  the  feelings,  must  be  subordinated 
to  the  jormal  principle  of  perfection  furnished  by  the  understanding. 
This  formal  principle  is  Wolff’s  maxim:  “Thue  das  Vollkommendste 
was  durch  dich  moglich  ist.”2  Just  how  the  affective,  material  principles 
are  to  be  brought  into  working  relationship  with  this  formal  principle, 
Kant  is  unable  to  state  very  clearly;  and  he  concludes  the  essay  in  doubt 
whether  the  intellectual  faculty  or  feeling  is  properly  the  first  ground  of 
morality. 

This  essay  reveals  Kant  desirous  of  recognizing  a  larger  social  content 
of  morality  than  can  be  gotten  under  the  old  conception  of  perfection. 
Consequently,  he  looks  to  the  feelings  to  supplement  this  conception, 

1  The  nature  of  the  Prussian  government  seems  to  have  developed  in  many  minds  a 
strong,  martial  sense  of  duty.  Cf.  J.  R.  Seeley,  Life  and  Times  of  Stein.  I,  44  f. 

2  Cf.  p.  27,  above. 


KANT 


59 


and  hits  upon  the  device  of  “formal”  and  “material”  principles  of  action 
adapted  from  Crusius,1  to  effect  the  co-ordination.  That  he  was  not 
satisfied  with  the  device  is  evident  from  the  halting  tone  with  which  he 
concludes  the  essay. 

The  prize  essay  made  the  perception  of  the  good  consist  in  an  “unan- 
alyzable  feeling  of  pleasure.”  In  the  Observations  on  the  Feeling  oj  the 
Beautiful  and  Sublime  (about  1764)  he  makes  a  further  discrimination 
of  this  feeling.  Even  thus  early  he  has  too  strong  an  idea  of  the  universal 
and  unconditioned  character  of  moral  obligation  to  find  in  the  feelings 
of  sympathy  and  benevolence  of  the  English  writers  a  sufficient  basis  of 
morality,  although  he  is  willing  to  concede  their  value  in  reinforcing  moral 
motivation.  Instead,  he  finds  the  foundation  of  morality  in  another 
feeling — that  of  the  beauty  and  dignity  of  human  nature.  The  idea  of 
the  dignity  and  worth  of  humanity — a  conception  which  he  owes  to  Rous¬ 
seau — furnishes  at  once  the  universality  and  the  obligatory  character 
desired,  for  “if  this  feeling  had  the  greatest  perfection  in  any  human 
heart,  this  person  would  love  and  cherish  himself  only  so  far  as  he  is  one 
of  all,  to  whom  his  widened  noble  feeling  extends  itself.”2  However, 
that  he  is  not  fully  satisfied  with  this  attempt  to  ground  morality  in  feeling 
may  be  inferred  from  his  complaints  of  its  indefinite  character,  when  he 
laments,  “das  Gefiihl  ist  nicht  einstimmig ! ”3 

Kant’s  ethical  position  at  this  time  is  succinctly  stated  in  the  program 
of  his  lecture  course  for  1765-66, 4  where  he  says  that  moral  judgments 
can  “immediately,  and  without  the  circumlocution  of  proofs,  be  recog¬ 
nized  by  the  human  heart  through  what  one  calls  sentiment;”  that  the 
investigations  of  Shaftesbury,  Hutcheson,  and  Hume  have  proceeded 
farthest  in  the  search  for  the  first  grounds  of  all  morality,  but  are  incom¬ 
plete  and  lack  precision;  and  that  this  completeness  and  precision  are 
to  be  afforded  them  by  reference  to  the  great  significance  of  the  reason 
for  moral  principles.  It  seems  clear,  both  from  this  lecture  program  and 
from  the  essays  just  mentioned,  that  Kant  was  disposed  at  this  time  to 
take  the  greater  part  of  his  moral  system  from  the  British  writers,  simply 
using  rationalistic  conceptions  to  supplement  the  account,  and  give  it 
greater  definiteness  and  precision. 

While  too  much  stress  ought  not  to  be  laid  upon  a  treatise  written 
in  a  semi-playful  manner,  yet  it  seems  quite  evident  that  the  Dreams  of 
a  Spirit-Seer  (1766)  represents  a  considerably  altered  attitude  toward 
the  British  writers,  and  that  their  influence  over  him  was  waning.  The 

1  H.,  II,  301-4;  G.  S.,  II,  293-96.  3  H.,  II,  248;  G.  S.,  II,  226. 

2  H.,  II,  239;  G.  S .,  II,  217.  4  H.,  II,  311  ff.;  G.  S.,  II,  303  ff. 


6o 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


primacy  of  the  will  over  the  feelings  is  indicated  more  emphatically,  and 
the  stronger  moral  impulse  furnished  by  the  law  of  duty,  and  the  weaker 
one  of  benevolence,  “bear  us  awTay  to  the  discomfiture  of  our  selfishness. 
The  moral  impulses  here  described  do  not  seem  to  be  feelings  of  pleasure 
and  pain,  but  rather  to  be  attributed  wholly  to  the  volitional  side  of  our 
nature.  If  Kant  had  had  his  doctrine  of  freedom  worked  out  at  this 
time,  feeling  would  have  ceased  to  serve  either  as  motive  or  as  criterion 

of  morality  henceforth,  and  he  would  have  here  enunciated  that  “there 

% 

is  nothing  good  except  a  good  will;”  but  as  such  was  not  the  case,  he 
continued  to  seek  a  universal  standard  of  morality  in  feeling. 

C.  FROM  THE  INAUGURAL  DISSERTATION  TO  THE  CRITIQUE  OF  PURE 

REASON 

That  a  considerable  shift  took  place  in  Kant’s  thought  at  this  time  is 
indicated  by  a  short  but  pointed  passage  in  the  Inaugural  Dissertation 
(1770),  in  which  moral  perfection  is  the  ideal,  and  is  to  be  recognized 
only  by  the  pure  intellect.  Epicurus  and  “some  moderns  who  follow 
him  from  afar,  ”  like  Shaftesbury,  are  to  be  rightly  reprehended  for  at¬ 
tempting  to  reduce  moral  criteria  to  deductions  from  the  sense  of  pleasure 
and  pain.2  Perfection  is  still  the  highest  conception  of  morality,  but  its 
content  is  to  be  recognized  by  the  pure  intellect,  apparently,  and  not  by 
an  “unanalyzable  feeling.  ”  Shaftesbury,  who  had  been  highly  commended 
in  the  prize  essay  and  the  lecture  program,  is  here  emphatically  repu¬ 
diated.  From  reading  this  passage  one  could  easily  infer  that  feeling 
is  to  play  no  part  in  morality  whatever;  but  inasmuch  as  we  still  find  him 
endeavoring  to  utilize  pleasure  and  happiness  in  formulating  moral  prin¬ 
ciples  later  in  this  decade,  one  hesitates  to  make  a  conclusion  that  would 
necessitate  the  assumption  of  another  large  shift  in  the  other  direction, 
upon  the  strength  of  so  brief  a  passage.  However,  it  is  clear  that  this 
attitude  has  greatly  changed  at  this  time  from  what  it  had  been  in  1765; 
and  it  is  probable  that  henceforth  he  never  was  a  conscious  follower  of 
the  English  school. 

Sometime  during  the  decade  that  intervened  between  the  appearance 
of  the  Inaugural  Dissertation  and  the  Critique  oj  Pure  Reason  Kant  must 
have  penned  the  celebrated  “Fragment  6”  in  Reicke’s  Lose  Blatter  A  The 

1  H.,  II,  342  f.;  G.  S.,  II,  335;  Eng.  trans.  by  Goerwitz,  63  f. 

2  H.,  II,  403;  G.  S.,  395  f.;  Eng.  trans.  by  W.  J.  Eckoff,  55. 

3  It  is  difficult  to  fix  a  more  precise  date.  The  subject  is  fully  discussed  by  Menzer 
in  the  Kant-Studien,  III,  71-90;  Thon,  Die  Grundprinzipien  der  Kantischen  Moral - 
philosophies  etc.  (Diss.,  Berlin,  1895) ;  Foerster,  loc.  cit. 


KANT 


6l 


distinction  between  the  sensible  and  intellectual  faculties  is  still  drawn 
upon  the  lines  of  the  Dissertation ,  while  the  attempt  at  a  transcendental 
deduction  of  happiness  reveals  the  methodology  of  the  Critique. 

In  happiness  two  things  are  distinguishable—  its  matter  and  its  form. 
The  first  consists  in  the  gratification  of  sensuous  desires;  the  second,  of 
confused  intellectual  pleasures  due  to  an  inner  agreement  among  the 
desires,  constitutes  virtue,  and  is  the  formal  condition  which  makes  happi¬ 
ness  possible.  “A  man  by  such  moral  dispositions  is  worthy  to  be  happy, 
i.  e.,  is  in  possession  of  all  the  means  whereby  he  can  effect  his  own  happi¬ 
ness  and  that  of  others.”  However,  he  still  lacks  the  empirical  elements 
of  happiness,  since  virtue  furnishes  no  motives.  These  have  to  be  supplied 
by  the  sensibility. 

This  position  reminds  us  very  much  of  Wolff  and  Mendelssohn  in 
many  respects;  for  instance,  in  the  derivation  of  morality  from  the  intel¬ 
lect,  while  motivation  must  come  from  the  sensibility.  It  is  more  like 
the  latter  in  recognizing  intellectual  pleasures.  The  treatment  is  different 
from  any  rationalistic  account  in  regarding  intellectual  pleasure  as  at  the 
same  time  confused,  and  yet  not  as  a  motive  to  action. 

The  fragment  is  extremely  noteworthy  in  that  it  shows  that  Kant 
was  endeavoring  to  find  an  a  priori  element  in  happiness,  while  he  was 
working  out  his  critical  philosophy.  Had  he  been  satisfied  with  the  result 
of  this  fragment,  he  doubtless  could  have  based  his  critical  ethics  upon 
happiness.  His  failure  to  find  a  satisfactory  a  priori  element  in  happiness, 
while  he  found  one  in  his  doctrine  of  the  will,  determined  the  character 
of  his  ethical  system.  It  is  significant,  as  Foerster  remarks,  that  in  this 
fragment  Kant  does  not  once  mention  the  word  “duty.”  Private  happi¬ 
ness  is  made  the  motive  to  morality,  and  even  its  a  priori  element,  virtue, 
is  a  personal  affair.  To  be  virtuous  is  to  be  “worthy  of  happiness.” 
The  fact  that  he  was  willing  so  far  to  abandon  the  larger  social  demands, 
which  he  had  recognized  at  least  as  early  as  the  Observations  on  the  Beau¬ 
tiful  and  Sublime ,  provided  only  that  he  could  find  an  a  priori  principle 
in  private  happiness,  indicates  how  pressing  was  the  demand  for  such  a 
principle  before  he  found  one  in  his  doctrine  of  the  will. 

The  lectures  upon  Psychology ,  reported  by  Politz,  Dr.  Max  Heinze 
has  shown  almost  beyond  a  doubt,  must  have  been  delivered  between 
1775  and  1779. 1  Here  Kant  distinguishes  two  kinds  of  pleasure,  belonging 
respectively  to  the  sensibility  and  to  the  understanding.  Those  belonging 
to  the  former  are  subdivided  into  animal  and  human.  The  psychological 
definition  of  pleasure  here  employed  is  virtually  the  same  as  that  used  by 

1  Kant's  V orlesungen  iiber  Metaphysik  (Leipzig,  1894),  515  f. 


62 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


him  in  the  critical  period,  though  not  so  well  worked  out,  and  so  may  be 
passed  over  here.  Morality  is  concerned  only  with  the  intellectual  pleas¬ 
ures,  which  are  due  to  the  understanding. 

Intellectual  pleasure  is  distinguished  from  other  kinds  by  being  uni¬ 
versal  and  necessary.  What  is  an  object  of  intellectual  pleasure  is  good; 
and  “good”  is  defined  as  “what  must  necessarily  please  everyone. ”T 
The  tentativeness  of  this  description  of  the  good  as  intellectual  pleasure 
is  indicated  by  his  saying  that,  strictly  speaking,  it  is  not  a  pleasure,  because 
the  good  cannot  affect  our  senses,  but  that  we  call  it  a  pleasure  because 
we  cannot  otherwise  express  “the  subjectively  impelling  power  of  objective 
necessitation.”2  This  intellectual  pleasure  alone  does  not  seem  sufficient 
to  afford  us  happiness.  But  it  makes  us  “worthy  of  happiness.”  This 
consciousness  of  desert  furnishes  the  ground  for  faith  in  a  future  life,  and 
becomes  the  motive  to  virtue,  inducing  us  to  obey  moral  laws,  which 
without  it  would  be  only  chimeras. 

In  these  lectures  we  thus  have  several  of  the  ideas  of  the  critical  philos¬ 
ophy  mixed  with  others  of  an  earlier  period.  The  division  into  sensible 
and  intellectual  pleasure  is  more  in  the  spirit  of  the  Dissertation.  The 
inadequacy  of  intellectual  pleasure  to  serve  as  a  complete  motive  by  itself, 
and  yet  the  idea  that  it  is  a  partial  one,  marks  a  transitional  stage  in  his 
thought.  The  search  for  a  universal  and  necessary  element  in  morality, 
the  employment  of  feeling  to  indicate  the  subjective  side  of  moral  obli¬ 
gation,  the  idea  that  morality  only  effects  “worthiness  to  be  happy,” 
and  the  postulation  on  this  last  ground  of  a  future  life,  all  foreshadow 
the  critical  period. 

In  the  Critique  oj  Pure  Reason  morality  is  given  a  larger  social  content 
than  hitherto,  and  is  grounded  a  priori  in  a  principle  of  the  pure  practical 
reason.  This  principle  is  not  given  an  explicit  formulation.  The  old 
perfectionist  formula  has  evidently  been  discarded,  while  the  new  maxim 
of  the  categorical  law  probably  had  not  yet  been  worked  out.  At  any 
rate,  his  only  statement  here  is:  “Do  that  which  will  render  thee  worthy 
of  happiness.”3  Happiness  would  consist  in  the  complete  satisfaction 
of  all  our  desires  concentrated  into  one,4  as  regards  comprehensiveness, 
intensity,  and  duration.5  The  direct  search  for  this  is  prudence,  which 
can  proceed  only  upon  empirical  grounds;  since  happiness  is  largely  a 

1  P.  172  in  Politz’  edition. 

2  Ibid,  p.  187. 

3  H.,  Ill,  534;  G.  S.,  Ill,  525;  M.,  649. 

4  H.,  Ill,  529;  G.  S.,  Ill,  520;  M.,  642. 

sH.,  Ill,  532;  G.  S.,  Ill,  523;  M.,  647. 


KANT  63 

matter  of  the  satisfaction  of  sensuous  impulses,  and  no  a  priori  principle 
can  be  found  determining  it. 

The  moral  law  is  not  at  all  to  be  derived  from  the  conception  of  happi¬ 
ness,  nor  does  the  desire  for  happiness  serve  as  the  proper  motive  for 
moral  action.1  Morality,  however,  is  being  “ worthy  of  happiness,” 
and  involves  the  idea  that  ultimately  everyone  must  actually  obtain  as 
much  happiness  as  he  deserves.2  In  this  life,  to  be  sure,  the  individual 
does  not  realize  happiness,  since  this  would  necessitate  that  everyone  else 
perfectly  complies  with  it  also.  But  we  must  believe  that  this  must  ulti¬ 
mately  be  the  case  in  a  future  life,  and  the  moral  law  forces  us  to  postulate 
such  a  life,  and  also  a  Divine  Being.  Without  such  belief  the  “glorious 
ideals  of  morality  are  indeed  objects  of  applause  and  admiration,  but  are 
not  springs  of  purpose  and  action.  ”3 

Though  the  statement  in  this  Critique  is  somewhat  ambiguous — in 
fact,  in  places  seems  almost  paradoxical — and  is  not  wholly  free  from  a 
theological  setting,4  we  really  have  an  argument  involved  similar  to  that 
of  the  Critique  oj  Practical  Reason.  The  argument  is  wholly  a  logical 
one.  It  is  not  a  hedonistic  desire  for  happiness  that  prompts  to  the  obedi¬ 
ence  to  the  moral  law;  the  latter  carries  with  it  its  own  command,  and 
is  an  expression  of  our  own  free  will.  But  the  idea  of  desert  of  happiness 
is  involved  in  the  conception  of  this  moral  law.  If  this  desert  were  not 
thought  of  as  realizable,  the  moral  law  would  be  self-contradictory;  it 
would  be  a  chimera,  and  the  belief  in  its  a  priori  character  could  not  be 
maintained. 

In  the  statement  referred  to  above — that,  if  the  moral  law  were  univer¬ 
sally  followed,  happiness  would  immediately  ensue — we  can  perceive  an 
advance  upon  “Fragment  6.”  There  individual  morality  could  afford 
individual  happiness;  here  individual  happiness  is  obtainable  only  through 
universal  obedience  to  the  law  and  universal  happiness.  The  social 
character  of  both  moral  obligation  and  happiness  has  become  recognized. 
It  would  probably  be  going  too  far  to  say  that  in  the  Critique  oj  Pure 
Reason  Kant  thinks  that  the  main  purpose  of  the  moral  law  is  to  effect 
universal  happiness;  but  this  is  certainly  involved  in  it.  The  fact  that 
he  defines  moral  action  as  action  done  in  order  to  deserve  happiness  indi¬ 
cates  that  the  connection  between  the  two  was  certainly  prominent  in  his 
mind. 

1  H.,  Ill,  537;  G.  5.,  Ill,  528;  M.,  652  f. 

2  H.,  Ill,  534,  G.  S.,  Ill,  525,  M.,  649* 

sH,  III,  537;  G.  5.,  Ill,  528;  M.,  652. 

4H.,  Ill,  536;  G.  S.,  Ill,  527;  M.,  651. 


6-1 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


D.  THE  ETHICAL  SYSTEM  IN  ITS  FINAL  FORM 

Between  the  appearance  of  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  and  the  Grund- 
legung,  Kant  worked  out  the  doctrine  of  freedom  and  its  identification 
with  the  moral  law.  In  these  he  found  the  a  priori  principle  which  he 
had  at  one  time  sought  in  happiness.  These  become  the  central  point 
in  his  moral  system,  and  other  considerations,  such  as  happiness  and  pleas¬ 
ure,  are  subordinated  to  it.  As  the  later  works  all  contain  essentially 
the  same  point  of  view,  it  will  no  longer  be  necessary  to  discuss  them  in 
chronological  order. 

The  psychology  of  pleasure  is  stated  most  fully  in  the  Menschen- 
kunde ,  edited  by  Starke,  which,  Menzer  has  shown,  must  have  been  written 
between  the  years  1779  and  1788,  and  so  properly  belongs  to  the  critical 
period,1  and  in  the  Anthropologie  (1788).  In  both  documents  pleasure 
is  defined  as  the  feeling  of  the  furtherance ,  and  pain  as  that  of  the  hin¬ 
drance,  of  life.  The  vital  force  has  a  degree  along  with  which  a  state  of 
comfort  ( das  Wohlbefinden)  exists,  which  is  neither  pleasant  nor  painful. 
When  this  state  is  reduced  to  a  lower  pitch  by  any  hindrance,  pain  is  felt. 
The  relief  of  this  is  pleasure.  Pleasure  is  thus  always  preceded  by  pain, 
and  is  nothing  positive.  The  passage  in  the  Menschenkunde  goes  on  to 
say  that  corresponding  to  sensuous  pleasure  and  pain  there  is  intellectual 
pleasure  and  pain;  as  in  thought  we  are  always  dissatisfied  with  the 
present,  and  looking  forward  to  the  future.  Pleasure  cannot  endure  in 
an  unbroken  continuity,  like  pain.  It  is  only  the  sudden,  instantaneous 
removal  of  pain  that  affords  pleasure.  Thus  in  slow  diseases  there  is 
conscious  constant  pain,  and  no  pleasure.  In  persons  of  melancholic 
temperament  the  pain  is  constant,  the  sudden  relief  is  not  felt,  and  there¬ 
fore  many  of  these  are  led  to  suicide  as  the  only  possible  relief  from  pain. 
However,  Kant  regards  pain  as  a  wise  design  of  providence  in  order  to 
make  us  dissatisfied  with  our  condition,  and  to  impel  us  to  progress. 

Kant’s  psychology  of  pleasure  must  appear  defective,  even  to  a  hedon¬ 
ist.  If  pleasure  is  only  negative,  while  pain  is  positive,  the  function  of 
the  two  could  only  be  to  conserve  the  present  well-being  of  the  subject; 
for,  as  soon  as  the  subject  were  restored  to  the  state  of  well-being  from 
which  pain  announced  a  lapse,  and  the  pain  were  wholly  removed,  then 
pleasure,  if  pleasure  is  due  only  to  the  sudden  removal  of  pain,  must  cease 
also.  There  could  be  no  progress.  Moreover,  as  in  many  cases  pleasure 
is  not  experienced  at  all  in  consciousness,  while  pain  is  very  prominent, 
pessimism  seems  inevitable.  Certainly  a  state  of  happiness  consisting 
of  permanent  pleasure  would  be  a  contradiction  in  itself,  and  could  not 
1  Kant-Studien,  III,  60. 


KANT 


65 


s* 


be  morally  postulated.  It  is  clear  that  Kant  does  not  always  employ 
pleasure  in  this  negative  manner  in  which  he  here  defines  it,  and  that 
his  treatment  in  his  ethical  works  involves  a  recognition  of  positive  pleas¬ 
ures,  as  well  as  pleasures  of  activity.  Like  Leibniz,  he  employs  a  defi¬ 
nition  of  pleasure  which  is  inadequate  to  perform  what  he  really  intends 
it  to  do. 

With  reference  to  desire  and  volition  there  are  two  kinds  of  pleasure: 
(1)  contemplative ,  which  is  not  connected  with  desire  for  the  object,  as  in 
judgments  of  taste;  and  (2)  practical ,  which  is  necessarily  connected  with 
desire  for  the  object.  It  is  with  this  latter  type  that  ethics  is  concerned. 
It  may  be  of  two  different  varieties:  (a)  it  may  precede  desire  and  be  the 
cause  of  desire  and  volition,  in  which  case  the  pleasure  is  “  pathological,  ” 
since  it  determines  action  for  its  own  sake,  regardless  of  the  moral  law; 
(b)  it  may  follow  desire,  and  attend  the  feeling  of  reverence ,  which  is  due 
to  the  action  of  the  reason  and  its  moral  law.1 

Reverence  is  the  feeling  present  in  moral  action.  Like  all  other 
feelings,  this  is  subjective.  It  is  due  to  the  consciousness  upon  the  part 
of  the  sensibility,  of  its  own  repression  by  the  reason.  This  feeling  is 
of  intellectual  origin,  and  is  the  only  one  that  can  be  known  a  priori.2 
This  feeling  is  often  painful.  The  moral  law  checks  our  self-conceit, 
humbles  our  self-consciousness,  thwarts  our  inclinations,  and  produces 
an  impression  of  displeasure  which  can  be  known  a  priori .3  This,  how¬ 
ever,  is  only  the  negative ,  pathological  side  of  reverence.  As  the  moral 
law  comes  to  be  known  in  its  purity  and  sublimity  as  the  activity  of  the 
pure  practical  reason,  it  awakens  positive  respect.  Then  one  feels  an 
interest  in  the  law,  and  this  conscious  recognition  of  the  law  affords  a  feel¬ 
ing  of  self-approbation.4  In  the  Critiques  Kant  nowhere  explicitly  calls 
this  positive  feeling  of  reverence  pleasurable, 5  though  he  describes  the 
negative  aspect  as  painful;  but  in  the  Tugendlehre  moral  feeling  is  quite 
frankly  spoken  of  as  “susceptibility  for  pleasure  or  pain,”  according  as 
one  is  conscious  of  the  agreement  or  disagreement  of  action  with  the  law 
of  duty.6  That  pleasure  arises  from  doing  one’s  duty,  Kant  says  very 
explicitly  in  the  latter  work;  but,  of  course,  it  is  a  subjective  feeling  that 
is  dependent  upon  the  action  of  the  reason,  and  not  at  all  the  cause  of  it. 

1  Introduction  to  the  Metaphysics  of  Morals.  3  H.,  V,  83;  A.  171. 

2  H.,  V,  178;  A.,  166.  4H.,  V,  84;  A.,  172 

s  He  almost  does  so  in  the  Critique  of  Judgment,  where  he  speaks  of  the  moral 
law  affording  positive  intellectual  satisfaction  in  the  feeling  of  the  sublime  (§  29), 
and  of  a  certain  analogy  between  pleasure  in  the  beautiful  forms  of  nature  and  interest 
in  the  moral  law  (§  42). 

6  H.,  VII,  202-6;  A.,  309-11. 


66 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


This  description  evidently  is  a  re-echo  of  the  Wolffian  definition  of  pleasure 
as  due  to  the  agreement  and  co-operation  of  one’s  powers. 

The  explicit  recognition  of  the  presence  of  pleasure  in  the  feeling  of 
reverence  in  the  T ugendlehre  does  not  really  represent  a  change  in  thought 
from  the  Critique  of  Practical  Reason.  The  same  idea  is  implied  in  the 
earlier  work,  but  is  not  explicitly  stated,  perhaps  for  this  reason.  He 
was  afraid  at  that  time  that  any  recognition  of  pleasure  in  moral  action 
would  be  overrated,  and  he  might  be  interpreted  as  holding  a  position 
similar  to  that  of  such  writers  as  Mendelssohn  and  Schiller:  whereas, 
at  the  time  of  writing  the  later  work,  he  felt  that  his  position  had  become 
sufficiently  understood  to  enable  him  to  designate  the  recognition  which 
he  was  willing  to  give  to  pleasure  in  moral  action  without  being  misin¬ 
terpreted. 

The  next  topic  which  we  shall  have  to  consider  is:  Just  what  place 
does  the  feeling  of  reverence,  with  its  attendant  pleasure  or  pain,  play  in 
the  moral  act?  The  feeling  clearly  appears  subsequent  to  the  work  of 
the  reason,  but  prior  to  overt  action.  Two  interpretations  as  to  its  func¬ 
tional  significance  are  open  to  us. 

First,  we  may  suppose  that  the  practical  reason  is  able  to  initiate  action 
on  its  own  account,  without  the  instrumentality  of  the  sensibility.  The 
feeling  of  reverence  is  merely  an  accompanying  circumstance,  a  sort  of 
“  epi-phenomenon  ”  in  moral  action,  and  not  at  all  fundamental.  Many 
passages,  mostly  in  the  Critique  of  Practical  Reason ,  seem  to  confirm 
this  view.1  The  feeling  is  merely  the  consciousness  on  the  part  on  the 
sensibility  of  its  own  repression,  and  it  has  no  part  whatever  to  play  in  the 
moral  act.  There  is  no  organic  relationship  between  the  sensibility  and 
the  reason.  They  are  irreconcilable  factors,  and  when  action  is  moral  the 
sensibility  must  be  forced  to  the  wall  and  suppressed  in  the  interests  of 
morality  and  freedom.  Its  only  conceivable  use  is  in  determining  action 
in  non- moral  situations,  where  reason  need  not  be  brought  into  exercise. 
At  other  times,  the  sensibility,  with  its  feelings  of  pleasure  and  pain,  is 
a  nuisance,  an  incumbrance  that  must  be  pushed  aside.  In  the  extreme 
woodenness  of  the  account,  and  the  lack  of  any  functional  relationship 
between  the  sensibility  and  the  reason,  this  interpretation  does  not  credit 
Kant  with  any  advance  upon  Wolff. 

Our  other  alternative  is  to  say  that  Kant  thought  that  the  practical 
reason  initiates  moral  action  through  the  instrumentality  of  the  sensibility. 
Desire  may,  indeed,  be  effected  by  the  moral  law,  but  it  must  evoke  pleas¬ 
ure  or  pain  before  it  can  pass  into  action.  In  the  mechanism  of  the  moral 
XE.  g.,  H.,  V,  24,  25  f.,  66  f.,  76  f.;  A.,  no,  112,  153  f.,  164  f. 


KANT 


67 


act  the  feeling  of  reverence  is  an  essential  part  of  the  process:  it  is  at  the 
same  time  the  effect  upon  the  sensibility  of  the  action  of  the  reason,  and 
the  efficient  cause  of  moral  action.  Action  is  always  the  consequence 
of  pleasure  and  pain;  but  the  pleasures  and  pains  of  reverence  exceed 
all  others,  and  so  entirely  transform  the  character  of  feeling  when  it  is 
subjected  to  the  reason  and  the  moral  law.  It  is  scarcely  possible  to 
interpret  the  Grundlegung  and  the  Tugendlehre  in  places,  except  in  some 
such  way  as  this.1  The  passages  in  the  Critique  oj  Practical  Reason  can, 
we  believe,  be  reconciled  with  this  view.  The  thesis  which  Kant  is  defend¬ 
ing  in  each  of  them  is  simply  that  feeling  must  not  be  considered  as  in  any 
way  prior  to  the  action  of  the  reason,  and  so  determining  the  morality  of 
the  act.2  It  is  also  to  be  remembered  that  the  Critique  oj  Practical  Reason 
proposes  to  dispense  with  psychological  considerations,  and  so  psycho¬ 
logical  accuracy  is  not  to  be  expected  in  it.3 

If  we  are  justified  in  adopting  this  latter  interpretation,  it  is  not  difficult 
to  explain  Kant’s  doctrine  of  moral  interest.  Interest  in  the  moral  law 
seems  to  be  the  same  feeling  as  reverence  viewed  in  its  positive  aspect, 
and  become  a  motive  to  action.  Through  interest  reason  becomes  prac¬ 
tical,  and  the  moral  law  is  realized  in  action.4  Such  interest  is  a  rational 
motive  independent  of  the  sensibility,  in  the  sense  that  its  origin  is  not 
due  to  the  sensibility — else  it  would  be  “pathological.”  It  is  repeatedly 
described  as  a  “moral  feeling.”5 

In  this  use  of  interest,  Kant  is  clearly  attempting  to  secure  what  modern 
ethical  psychologists  would  call  the  “mediation  of  impulse.”  Professor 
Dewey,  for  instance,  speaks  of  an  impulse  as  mediated  when  the  conse¬ 
quences  of  an  act,  the  ideal  considerations  by  which  it  is  evaluated,  are 
referred  back  to  it,  and  the  impulse  becomes  idealized  or  rationalized.6 
Kant’s  distinction  between  “practical  interest,”  which  is  rational  and 
free,  and  “pathological  interest,”  which  is  empirical  and  dependent  upon 
inclinations,  is  similar.  The  practical  interest  has  been  mediated;  the 
pathological  interest  is  unmediated,  and  unreflective.7 

1  Especially  H.,  IV,  308  f.,  and  VII,  203  (A.,  80  f.  and  310). 

2  Cf.  A.,  169,  top;  H.,  V.  81. 

3  A.,  95,  note;  H.,  IV,  9. 

4H,  IV,  261  f.,  306  f.;  V,  84  (A.,  30,  footnote;  80,  footnote;  172  f.). 

s  E.  g.,  H.,  IV,  261;  V,  85  (A.,  80,  173);  cf.  Critique  of  Judgment ,  §142. 

6  J.  Dewey,  The  Study  oj  Ethics:  A  Syllabus  (Ann  Arbor,  1897),  17-19,  49— 5 5 * 

7  However,  there  is  this  difference:  For  Kant  the  moral  law  is  transcendental 
in  character.  The  finite  intelligence  becomes  aware  of  it  rationally  before  it  feels  the 
impulse  to  act  upon  it  empirically.  Kant’s  problem  is  to  secure  the  mediation  of 


68 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


If  we  are  justified  in  our  interpretation  of  Kant’s  use  of  reverence 
and  interest,  there  seems  to  be  a  way  in  which  the  sensibility  can  be  brought 
into  active  co-operation  with  the  reason  in  a  scheme  of  self-realization, 
with  only  very  slight  modification  of  Kant’s  doctrine  as  a  whole.  Pleas¬ 
ure  and  pain  would  become  the  instruments  through  which  the  moral  law 
becomes  realized  in  human  experience.  Viewing  pleasure  as  the  con¬ 
comitant  of  successful  activity,  and  pain  as  that  of  unsuccessful  activity, 
but  neither  as  the  cause  which  initiates  activity,  but  as  useful  in  rein¬ 
forcing  it  and  enabling  the  intelligible  self  to  carry  out  its  ends  in  the  world 
of  experience,  we  can  allot  to  pleasure  a  genuine  and  useful  place  in  moral 
self-realization.  From  such  a  point  of  view  Kant  could  have  postulated 
a  summum  bonum  like  that  of  Leibniz,  which  would  ever  have  been  a 
progression  in  the  realization  of  duty,  ever  attended  by  pleasure  and 
happiness,  because  duty  was  ever  being  successfully  realized.  Happiness 
would  then  have  stood  in  logical  relationship  with  his  scheme  of  moral 
action,  instead  of  being  somewhat  arbitrarily  and  externally  forced  into 
the  conception  of  the  complete  good. 

Two  reasons  probably  explain  why  Kant  did  not  work  out  a  more 
satisfactory  account  of  the  moral  act,  and  effect  a  more  logical  relation¬ 
ship  between  the  reason  and  the  sensibility,  duty  and  happiness,  (i) 
His  method  was  mainly  metaphysical.  He  wished  to  discover  the  a  priori 
elements  in  moral  volition,  and  did  not  primarily  concern  himself  with 
the  psychology  of  the  moral  act.  The  metaphysical  validity,  the  ultimate 
reality  of  morality,  and  not  the  way  in  which  the  volitional  processes 
go  on,  occupied  his  main  attention.  (2)  The  inadequacy  of  his  psycho¬ 
logical  definition  of  pleasure  rendered  it  impossible  for  him  to  give  it  a 
satisfactory  place  in  moral  action.  He  assumed  that  action  upon  the 
part  of  the  sensibility  is  always  governed  by  the  direct  desire  for  pleasure 
and  happiness.1  Further,  as  we  have  seen,  his  psychological  definition 
of  pleasure  involves  pessimism,  if  taken  literally;  because  he  failed  to 
take  account  of  the  pleasure  of  activity  for  its  own  sake. 

Having  concluded  our  discussion  of  Kant’s  doctrine  of  pleasure, 
let  us  now  consider  his  treatment  of  happiness.  On  account  of  the  reasons 

duty  already  recognized  by  the  reason,  so  that  it  will  pass  over  into  volition,  and  be 
acted  upon.  Dewey’s  problem  is  to  rationalize  impulses  already  present  in  conscious¬ 
ness.  Doubtless  in  actual  experience  we  have  moral  conflicts  of  both  types. 

1  He  simply  took  psychological  hedonism  for  granted,  so  far  as  the  sensibility 
is  concerned.  Cf.  H.,  IV,  278;  V,  39;  VII,  189;  G.  S.,  IV,  430;  A.,  46,  126,  296. 
I  have  not  enlarged  upon  the  hedonistic  fallacy  in  Kant.  Perhaps  the  best  discussion 
of  the  fallacy  is  that  by  Woodbridge,  International  Journal  of  Ethics ,  VII,  475  ff. 
Messer  fully  explains  the  extent  to  which  Kant  is  guilty  of  it  {op.  cit.,  chap.  x). 


KANT 


69 


mentioned  in  the  description  of  his  doctrine  of  pleasure,  Kant  failed  to 
give  happiness  a  logical  relationship  to  the  rest  of  his  moral  system,  though, 
as  we  shall  see,  he  gave  it  considerable  recognition — more,  perhaps,  than 
*s  generally  understood. 

In  the  works  of  the  critical  period,  happiness  consists  of  the  complete 
satisfaction  of  all  empirical  wants  and  inclinations;1  it  is  a  state  of  unin¬ 
terrupted  pleasure;2  and  it  seems  to  comprehend  the  conservation  and 
welfare  of  the  being  that  enjoys  it.3  It  is  not  an  ideal  of  the  reason 
but  of  the  empirical  faculty  of  the  imagination,  and  rests  solely  upon 
empirical  grounds.4  It  consists  wholly  in  a  pleasurable  state  due  to 
the  satisfaction  of  desires  arising  from  the  sensibility.  In  this  view  of 
happiness  we  are  reminded  of  Wolff.5 

The  history  of  Kant’s  treatment  of  happiness  shows  a  gradual  dis¬ 
placement  of  it  from  its  originally  prominent  position  during  the  sixties. 
It  is  gradually  forced  to  surrender  one  function  after  another  to  the  moral 
law.  In  the  critical  period  what  it  still  retains  are  the  somewhat  tattered, 
but  by  no  means  inconsiderable,  remnants  of  its  former  authority.  Three 
of  these  are  especially  prominent. 

1.  It  is  a  duty  to  seek  the  happiness  of  others.  In  the  precritical 
period,  as  we  have  seen,  one  of  the  main  difficulties,  in  Kant’s  mind, 
in  the  way  of  making  one’s  happiness  the  basis  of  moral  obligation,  was 
that  it  failed  to  give  a  sufficiently  social  content  to  moral  action.  The 
pleasures  of  benevolence  and  sympathy  were  altogether  inadequate  for 
the  purpose.  The  happiness  of  others  remained  an  important  part 
of  moral  obligation;  and  in  the  Tugendlehre  it  makes  up  the  main  content 
of  our  duty  to  them,  their  moral  well-being  involving  only  indeter¬ 
minate  obligation.6 

2.  Kant  also  continued  to  recognize  it  as  a  duty  to  seek  one’s  own 
happiness,  under  important  limitations.  The  distinction  between  happi¬ 
ness  and  morality  is  not  an  inevitable  opposition ;  we  are  simply  required 
to  “ take  no  account ”  of  happiness  when  duty  intervenes.  Kant  undoubt¬ 
edly  recognized  that  a  great  deal  of  the  ordinary  conduct  of  life  is  non- 
moral,  and  in  such  cases,  where  no  moral  issue  is  involved,  one  is  justified 
in  following  what  Kant  believed  to  be  one’s  invariable  natural  impulse 
to  happiness.  Kant  goes  even  farther  than  this.  It  actually  becomes  a 
duty  to  seek  one’s  own  happiness  when  this  affords  the  means  of  fulfilling 

1  H.,  IV,  253;  G.  S.,  IV,  405;  A,  21.  3H.,  IV,  243;  G.  S.,  Ill,  395;  A,  11. 

2  H.,  V,  22;  A,  108.  4  H.,  IV,  267;  G.  S .,  IV,  267;  A.,  36. 

5  Though  Wolff  does  not  hold  consistently  to  this  view.  Cf.  pp.  270.  above. 

6  H.,  VII,  189-92;  A.,  296-99. 


7o 


PLEASURE  IN  NON -HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


our  duty  (e.  g.,  acquirements  of  skill,  riches,  etc.),  and  when  the  absence 
of  happiness  (e.  g.,  in  poverty)  would  furnish  temptation  to  transgress 
the  law  of  duty.1  The  reason  why  Kant  did  not  make  this  recognition  of 
happiness  more  prominent  in  his  exposition  is  partly  because  his 
hedonistic  psychology  seemed  to  render  it  unnecessary,  and  partly  be¬ 
cause  the  strongly  hedonistic  tendencies  of  the  age  caused  Kant  to  feel 
it  necessary  to  throw  all  the  emphasis  the  other  way.  The  subsequent 
lapse  into  which  Romanticism  fell  shows  that  Kant  was  justified  in 
affirming  with  all  his  might  the  unqualified  force  of  the  categorical 
imperative. 

3.  Another  notable  recognition  of  happiness  is  its  retention  in  the  com¬ 
plete  good.2  It  is  not,  of  course,  the  main  element  in  the  highest  good, 
nor  is  it  an  element  that  seems  to  follow  logically  from  it.  The  highest 
good  is  simply  arbitrarily  widened  to  include  happiness  in  the  complete 
good.  Without  going  into  the  merits  of  the  discussion  between  Hager- 
strom  and  Messer3  as  to  whether  and  how  far  Kant  is  inconsistent  with 
himself  in  including  happiness  in  the  complete  good,  it  is  unquestionably 
true  that  to  the  minds  of  many  people  the  argument  for  God,  freedom, 
and  immortality  would  have  been  much  stronger  if  he  had  presented 
them  simply  as  postulates  necessary  to  insure  the  completion  of  purposes 
that  are  morally  enjoined  upon  us,  but  cannot  be  carried  out  in  this  life. 
It  seems  tolerably  evident,  as  Messer  indicates,  that  Kant  always  felt 
that  there  must  be  some  kind  of  inner  connection  between  virtue  and 
happiness.  Such  reiterated  expressions  as  “worthy  to  be  happy”  point 
in  this  direction,  and  his  belief  that  punishment  in  the  next  world  is  morally 
ordered,  confirms  it.4  At  any  rate,  Kant’s  use  of  happiness  here  in  a  way 
that  certainly  is  not  required  by  his  argument,  and  to  many  minds  actually 
weakens  it,  shows  how  far  Kant  actually  was  from  being  a  rigorist.  He 
really  favored  hedonism  more  than  his  system  warranted. 

The  conspicuous  failure  in  Kant’s  ethical  treatment  of  pleasure  and 
happiness,  as  has  been  said,  is  his  failure  to  reorganize  them,  and  bring 
them  into  logical  relationship  with  duty  in  the  moral  act.  He  had  begun 
to  do  this  in  his  treatment  of  reverence  and  interest,  but  he  never  worked 

1  H.,  V,  97  k;  A.,  187.  The  doctrine  of  radical  evil  affords  no  contradiction 
to  this  interpretation.  That  is  not  inherent  in  the  sensibility  as  such ,  but  only  in  the 
tendency  to  subordinate  the  moral  law  to  self-love.  Cf.  Messer,  op.  cit.,  237. 

2  An  interesting  development  of  this  idea  of  the  “complete  good”  has  been  re¬ 
cently  made  by  Professor  E.  B.  McGilvary,  “TheSummum  Bonum,”  in  Vol.  I  of  the 
University  0}  California  Contributions  to  Philosophy. 

3  Hagerstrom,  op.  cit.,  499  k;  Messer,  op.  cit.,  249  ff. 

4  H.,  VII,  149  f. 


KANT 


71 


the  idea  out  and  interpreted  happiness  in  the  light  of  it,  as  it  would  have 
been  possible  for  him  to  have  done  except  for  the  inadequacy  of  his  defi¬ 
nition  of  pleasure.  He  inherited  from  Wolff  a  hedonistic  psychology, 
so  far  as  the  sensibility  was  concerned,  and  a  hopeless  opposition  between 
it  and  the  reason;  and  he  never  outgrew  this  inherited  limitation.  Unable 
to  overcome  this  opposition  between  duty  and  happiness,  the  greatness 
of  his  work  rather  lies  in  his  full  recognition  and  development  of  it. 

As  has  been  pointed  out,  this  opposition  was  not  appreciated  by  the 
perfectionist  school.  Kant’s  development  was  prompted  by  his  percep¬ 
tion  that  morality  includes  more  than  individual  well-being,  however 
we  may  refine  the  conception.  The  unconditional  character  of  moral 
obligation,  and  its  entire  independence  of  feeling  and  inclination,  were 
perceived  by  him,  and  enunciated  with  directness  and  eloquence  that  is 
sublime. 


VI.  SEVERAL  NINETEENTH-CENTURY  NON-HEDONISTS 


It  is  of  course  impossible,  except  in  a  very  general  way,  to  characterize 
as  a  whole  the  non-hedonistic  writers  since  Kant,  which  are  here  to  be 
noticed.  With  the  rebirth  of  national  self-consciousness  at  the  beginning 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  the  enthusiastic  efforts  and  sacrifices  made 
by  patriots  in  consequence,  with  the  great  industrial  development  that 
has  made  men  and  nations  more  economically  interdependent,  and  with 
the  increased  human  sympathy  revealed  in  a  thousand  ways  that  imply 
a  recognition  of  common  brotherhood,  the  social  nature  of  morality  and 
duty  could  not  fail  to  be  recognized.  This  closer  sense  of  mutual  interests 
and  sympathies  has  led  Utilitarians  to  believe  that  a  man’s  personal  hap¬ 
piness  is  necessarily  dependent  upon  universal  happiness.  To  non- 
hedonistic  writers  who  are  not  satisfied  with  the  arguments  for  this  kind 
of  a  reconciliation,  the  essentially  social  character  of  morality,  and  its 
superiority  and  fundamental  opposition  to  the  solicitations  of  personal 
pleasure,  have  been  unquestioned. 

With  a  clearer  sense  of  the  unity  of  the  conscious  life,  and  a  better 
feeling  for  historical  development — results  due  in  a  considerable  measure 
to  the  work  of  Kant — there  is  no  longer  to  be  observed  so  sharp  a  dualism 
between  happiness  and  moral  action,  nor  such  arbitrary,  external  methods 
employed  at  overcoming  it,  as  we  have  seen  in  the  ethical  postulates  of 
Kant. 

Speaking  generally,  two  attitudes  toward  happiness  may  be  distin¬ 
guished.  Some  have  extruded  what  have  seemed  the  selfish,  anti-social, 
and  unaesthetic  elements  from  a  happiness  composed  simply  of  pleasure, 
and  have  associated  this  refined  happiness,  often  distinguished  as  blessed¬ 
ness,  with  the  realization  of  the  moral  ideal.  Such  is  the  attitude  of  Fichte, 
Herbart,  and  Lotze.  Schopenhauer,  who  despaired  of  the  realization 
of  any  positive  moral  ideal,  also  employs  a  quasi-happiness  of  aesthetic 
contemplation  as  a  mitigation  of  more  intense  suffering  and  defeat. 
Another  attitude  is  represented  by  those  who  refuse  to  see  any  connec¬ 
tion  between  happiness,  however  refined,  and  ultimate  moral  attainment; 
and,  while  recognizing  a  limited  functional  utility  to  pleasure  and  feeling 
in  the  psychology  of  the  moral  act,  refuse  to  recognize  happiness  as  any¬ 
thing  more  than  a  stepping-stone  to  a  higher  ethical  plane.  Hegel,  T. 
H.  Green,  and  Nietschze  may  thus  be  classified.  The  diversity  of  philo- 

72 


SEVERAL  NINETEENTH-CENTURY  NON-HEDONISTS 


73 


sophical  beliefs  represented  in  each  of  these  groups  reveals  how  very 
general  has  been  the  basis  of  classification.1 

A.  FICHTE  AND  HE6EL 

The  opposing  attitudes  of  Fichte  and  Hegel  arose  from  the  difficulties 
involved  in  the  somewhat  paradoxical  position  of  Kant,  which  at  the  same 
time  maintained  that  pleasure  is  empirical  and  subjective,  and  yet  affirmed 
that  a  happiness  composed  of  such  empirical  and  subjective  feelings  is 
a  necessary  ethical  postulate.  Both  Fichte  and  Hegel  are  agreed  that 
such  a  happiness  ( Gliickseligkeit )  cannot  be  regarded  as  the  reward  of 
virtue;  but  while  Fichte  substituted  for  this  a  refined  form  of  happiness 
which  he  called  blessedness  ( Seligkeit ),  Hegel  could  not  concede  to  happi¬ 
ness  anything  more  than  a  transitional  stage  in  moral  development ,  and 
thought  that  the  satisfaction  which  comes  from  truly  ethical  action  must 
be  of  a  wholly  different  character. 

Neither  Fichte  nor  Hegel  corrected  Kant  in  his  supposition  that  all 
empirical  desires  are  hedonistic;  but  while  the  opposition  between  empirical 
pleasure  and  moral  action  is  no  less  genuine,  it  seems  less  arbitrary,  as 
we  find  in  each  suggestions  that  the  latter  develops  out  of  the  former.  In 
this  respect  they  seem  to  have  more  of  a  sense  of  moral  development, 
and  come  more  closely  to  our  modern  evolutionary  point  of  view. 

Kant  was  a  pre-revolutionary  writer,  and  his  ethics  embodies  much 
of  the  individualism  of  Rousseau.  Fichte  represents  the  best  elements  in 
the  Revolution,  and  sought  to  give  it  a  lofty  ethical  character.  He  gives 
a  larger  recognition  to  feeling  in  his  use  of  conscience  and  blessedness 
in  moral  action  than  Kant  had  done ;  this  is  natural  in  the  case  of  a  writer 
living  in  a  period  when  the  Revolution,  in  making  men  conscious  of  their 
own  personalities,  had  inevitably  emphasized  the  place  of  feeling.  More¬ 
over,  the  national  self-consciousness,  which  he  had  done  so  much  to  awaken, 
gave  expression  to  patriotism,  which  is  as  much  a  matter  of  sentiment 
as  of  duty.  Such  a  philosopher  must  inevitably  make  the  function  of 
feeling  in  carrying  out  the  command  of  duty  more  prominent  than  Kant 
had  done.  Hegel,  on  the  other  hand,  represents  the  reaction  which  set 
in  against  the  Revolution,  and  is  the  champion  of  absolutism  and  bureau¬ 
cracy.  Consequently,  he  stood  for  the  entire  repression  of  feeling  and 
individuality  in  the  interests  of  the  state  and  church,  in  which  alone  true 
objectivity  is  to  be  found. 

1  The  classification  does  not  seem  important  enough  to  justify  treating  Hegel 
out  of  chronological  order;  especially  as  the  difference  between  the  two  attitudes 
can  best  be  shown  by  treating  his  view  in  connection  with  that  of  Fichte. 


74 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


Besides  the  general  tendency  of  the  times,  much  of  this  difference 
may  be  attributed  to  the  characters  of  the  men  themselves.  Fichte  was 
a  man  of  strong  emotional  temperament,  who  acted  more  quickly  than 
he  thought,  and  at  the  same  time  was  a  man  of  high  moral  integrity  and 
conscientiousness.  Such  a  man,  while  painfully  appreciating  the  necessity 
of  subordinating  the  feelings  to  the  intellect,  could  not  fail  to  recognize 
the  genuine  worth  of  feeling,  if  it  could  only  be  kept  in  its  proper  sub¬ 
ordinate  place.  Hegel,  on  the  other  hand,  is  described  as  a  bloodless  sort 
of  man,  coldly  intellectual.  Himself  without  emotions  he  could  not  fail  to 
exalt  the  rational  sphere  in  which  his  intellect  achieved  magnificent  results, 
while  he  despised  emotions  and  feelings,  which  he  could  not  understand, 
but  which  he  clearly  saw  made  men  act  and  think  less  rationally  and  con¬ 
sistently  than  he. 

Fichte,  even  more  consistently  than  Kant,  made  the  central  point  in 
his  system  the  fulfilment  of  duty.  It  is  in  this  that  freedom  consists; 
and  the  whole  of  life  and  experience  has  its  raison  d'etre  in  furnishing 
opportunity  for  the  exercise  of  duty.  Pleasure,  happiness,  and  impulse 
are  evaluated  with  reference  to  the  carrying-out  of  duty.  So  far  as  they 
are  conducive  to  this,  or  play  a  functional  part  therein,  they  are  good  and 
moral;  so  far  as  they  impede  the  realization  of  duty,  they  are  bad  and 
immoral.  Consequently,  we  have  two  kinds  of  feeling,  happiness  and 
impulse:  the  moral  kinds,  which  are  good,  and  the  immoral  kinds  which 
are  evil. 

Logically  prior  to  all  experience  exists  the  primal  impulse  to  activity, 
which  is  an  important  feature  of  the  Fichtean  system.  The  idea,  of  course, 
came  to  him  from  Spinoza.  Activity,  however,  was  a  much  more  positive 
category  in  his  mind  than  was  the  conatus  in  the  mind  of  Spinoza.  This 
primal,  impulsive  ego,  in  order  to  realize  the  moral  law  and  exercise  its 
freedom,  posits  a  world  of  nature,  or  non-ego,  in  which  the  material  of 
duty  is  presented  objectively.  But  the  pure  ego,  being  intellectual  and 
transcendental  in  character,  cannot  directly  act  upon  this  finite  matter. 
It  therefore  posits  in  opposition  to  this  material  of  nature  a  finite  ego,  in 
which  the  primal  impulse  to  duty  is  present.  The  vocation  of  the  finite 
ego  is  to  exercise  its  freedom  in  the  use  of  the  material  of  duty  presented 
to  it  in  sensuous  form  by  nature,  and  realize  the  lofty  aims  of  the  moral 
law  through  it. 

The  non-ego,  or  nature,  also  has  an  impulse,  and  its  action  upon  the 
finite  ego  (which,  as  an  object  in  the  world  of  objects,  can  be  affected 
mechanically)  awakens  feelings  of  pleasure  and  pain,  and  desires.  It 
is  necessary  that  this  should  occur  in  order  that  the  finite  ego  may  employ 
these  impulses,  desires,  and  feelings  for  the  carrying-out  of  the  moral 


SEVERAL  NINETEENTH-CENTURY  NON-HEDONISTS 


75 


law.  These  are  neither  good  nor  bad  in  themselves,  and  become  good 
or  bad  only  as  the  finite  ego  is  affected  by  them.  If  the  finite  ego  exercises 
its  own  freedom  and  employs  them  as  means  for  the  performance  of  duty, 
they  are  good  and  fulfil  their  proper  function.  If,  however,  the  finite 
ego  treats  them  as  furnishing  ends  in  themselves,  the  finite  ego  fails  to 
exercise  its  freedom,  and  so  far  becomes  a  merely  mechanical  object  in 
the  world  of  objects.  In  experiencing  feeling  and  natural  impulse,  the 
finite  ego  is  passive;  and  what  should  properly  be  the  means  of  action 
becomes  perverted  into  the  ends  of  action.  The  finite  ego  thus  becomes 
entangled  in  a  mesh  of  sensuous  pleasures  and  inclinations,  and,  no  longer 
standing  under  its  own  dominion,  or  that  of  the  transcendental  ego,  it 
becomes  the  slave  of  nature.1  The  possibility  of  this  constitutes  the 
radical  evil  in  man.  The  failure  of  the  finite  ego  to  exercise  its  freedom 
is  due  to  slothfulness — disinclination  to  reflect,  so  as  to  discern  its  duty, 
and  employ  it  in  the  interests  of  its  own  freedom.2 

Pleasures  have  no  unitary  principle  in  themselves,  and  can  properly 
serve  only  as  instruments  for  the  ego  to  use  in  working  out  its  duty.  Happi¬ 
ness  thought  of  as  a  harmonious  totality  of  pleasures  ( Glucks eligkeit ) 
is  thus  a  contradiction  in  terms.  It  could  not  exist;  and  if  it  did,  to 
seek  it  would  be  directly  opposed  to  the  higher  development  of  the  ego, 
and  would  be  morally  bad.  To  affirm  that  God  guarantees  to  men  such 
happiness  is  the  height  of  impiety.  Thus  Fichte  sharply  disagrees  with 
Kant  in  regard  to  happiness  as  a  moral  postulate.3 

Though  Fichte  thus  emphatically  repudiates  pleasure  as  furnishing 
the  end  of  action,  he  recognizes  even  more  fully  than  Kant  that  the  exer¬ 
cise  of  freedom  and  performance  of  duty  is  attended  by  a  certain  feeling 
of  pleasure.  When  the  finite  ego  acts  in  accordance  with  freedom  and 
the  primal  impulse,  a  feeling  of  enjoyment  arises;  and  whenever  this  is 
not  the  case,  sorrow  and  dissatisfaction  are  felt.4  This  kind  of  feeling 
is  unique  in  that  it  is  innate  in  the  experience  of  the  finite  ego.  This 
feeling  is  conscience.5  It  is  not  dependent  upon  anything  external,  but 
arises  out  of  the  depths  of  the  soul,  and  has  its  source  in  the  transcen- 

1  Werke,  II,  314;  IV,  108  f.;  Fichte's  Popular  Works  (trans.  by  Wm.  Smith, 
LL.  D.,  London,  1889),  I,  473.  The  Science  of  Ethics  as  Based  on  the  Science  of  Knowl¬ 
edge  (trans.  by  A.  E.  Kroeger,  London,  1897),  113  ff. 

2  Werke ,  IV,  177  ff.,  202;  Kroeger,  op.  cit.,  188  ff.,  212. 

3  The  most  trenchant  statement  is  in  the  “Appelation  gegen  die  Anklage  des 
Atheismus,”  Werke,  V;  cf.  esp.  p.  219. 

*  Werke,  IV,  143  b;  Kroeger,  op.  cit.,  151. 

s  Kant’s  reverence  is  thus  developed  by  Fichte  into  conscience.  It  is  clearly  a 
feeling,  being  the  felt  consciousness  of  our  inner  freedom.  Cf.  A.  Dimitroff,  Die 
psychologischen  Grundlagen  der  Ethik  J.  G.  Fichte's  (Jena,  1898),  181. 


76 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


dental  ego.  Even  the  feeling  of  dissatisfaction  is  not  a  feeling  of  unalloyed 
regret.  Its  presence  shows  that  we  are  not  totally  depraved.  We  are 
glad  that  we  are  capable  of  feeling  it,  and  our  self-contempt  is  lessened 
by  being  aware  that  we  still  have  a  conscience,  and  our  knowledge  that 
this  sorrow  is  a  wholesome  spur  that  sooner  or  later  will  impel  us  to  better 
action.1 

Fichte  does  not  go  so  far  as  Kant  in  saying  that  it  is  ever  a  duty  to 
seek  our  own  happiness;  though  he  does  make  it  a  material  duty  to  keep 
our  body  and  external  possessions  in  such  a  condition  that  we  may  employ 
them  in  the  pursuit  of  our  duty  most  successfully.  Nor  could  one  interpret 
Fichte  as  regarding  any  part  of  action  as  non-moral.  The  pursuit  of 
sensuous  pleasure  is  not,  however,  the  greatest  evil.  That  is  slothfulness. 
Anything  is  better  than  that.  So  action  for  even  sensuous  pleasure  repre¬ 
sents  the  first  step  upward  toward  the  blessed  life.2 

While  Fichte  has  unmixed  contempt  for  happiness  viewed  as  the 
summation  of  pleasure,  he  revives  the  Spinozistic  conception  of  beatitude 
(Seligkeit,  beatitudo ),  but  with  a  considerably  modified  significance,  remind¬ 
ing  us  in  some  respects  more  of  Leibniz.  Beatitude  is  a  state  which  can 
be  reached  in  this  life,  by  carrying  out  the  moral  law  in  one’s  conduct  as 
perfectly  as  the  limitations  of  finite  individuality  will  admit.3  The  method 
of  reaching  this  is  largely  intellectual,  but  also  active.  The  radical  evil 
is  due  to  failure  to  think  out  one’s  duty — a  statement  which  involves  the 
idea  of  active  thinking.  The  blessed  life  itself  differs  from  that  of  Spinoza 
in  the  greater  emphasis  upon  its  active  side;  it  is  no  state  of  idle  contem¬ 
plation,  but  one  of  unceasing  activity.4  Nor  is  there  any  such  attempt 
to  exclude  feeling  altogether  as  Spinoza  made.  Only  the  immoral  and 
anti-social  feelings  are  excluded.  In  this  blessed  life  there  is  “eternal 
possession  of  the  fulness  of  all  that  one  is  capable  of  enjoying,”  “admir¬ 
able  serenity  and  loveliness,”  “love,”  “freedom  from  pain,  trouble,  sorrow, 
and  privation.”5  This  blessed  life  is  not  a  state  of  absolute  perfection. 
Man  is  finite,  and  so  is  infinitely  removed  from  such  a  state,  and  can  never 
attain  it. 

Consequently,  as  with  Leibniz,  Fichte’s  beatitude  is  a  state  of  eternal 
progress,  constantly  rising  to  new  heights  of  attainment.  It  is  on  the 

1  Werke,  IV,  146;  V,499  f.;  Kroeger,  op.  cit.,  154;  Smith,  op.  cit.,  II,  416  f. 

2  Werke,  V,  499;  Smith,  op.  cit.,  II,  416b 

3  Werke,  V,  409;  Smith,  op.  cit.,  II,  305. 

4  Cf.  C.  Bos,  “La  beatitude  chez  Spinoza  et  chez  Fichte,”  Archiv.  jiir  Geschichte 
der  Philosophic,  XVIII. 

5  Smith,  op.  cit.,  II,  474-77;  Werke,  V,  548-50. 


SEVERAL  NINETEENTH-CENTURY  NON-HEDONISTS 


77 


ground  of  the  necessity  of  realizing  the  law  of  duty  which  will  take  forever, 
that  Fichte  postulates  immortality.  Such  a  view  does  not  seem  pessi¬ 
mistic  to  a  busy,  active  personality  like  Fichte.  With  much  the  same 
view  of  pleasure,  and  with  the  same  view  of  a  primal  impulse  to  activity 
Fichte’s  counsel  is  just  the  opposite  of  Schopenhauer’s:  “Act!  Act! 
it  is  to  that  end  that  we  are  here.  .  .  .  Let  us  rejoice  that  power  is  given 
to  us,  and  that  our  task  is  infinite.”1 

There  is  much  in  Fichte  that  is  quite  in  the  spirit  of  our  present  func¬ 
tional  and  genetic  modes  of  interpreting  life,  besides  his  assertion  of  the 
primacy  of  the  practical  reason;  and  beneath  the  heavy  verbiage  of  his 
technical  phraseology  we  can  discern  one  of  the  noblest  and  most  attrac¬ 
tive  personalities  with  which  we  become  acquainted  in  philosophy.2 

Hegel  follows  Kant  and  Fichte  in  affirming  that  only  in  rational 
action  is  the  will  free.  He  has  a  better  sense  of  historical  development, 
however,  than  either  of  the  other  two,  and  for  him  the  attainment  of  free¬ 
dom  and  rationality  is  a  gradual  process.  At  first  superior  to  the  animals 
rather  by  his  possibilities  than  in  actuality,  man  gradually,  through  thought 
and  reflection,  achieves  a  consciousness  of  his  action,  and  so  comes  to  be 
a  partaker  in  reason. 

In  the  first  stage  of  his  upward  development  the  will  is  free  only  in  an 
abstract  and  formal  manner.  Man  is  guided  by  the  “utterly  subjective 
and  superficial  feeling  of  pleasant  and  unpleasant.”3  Pleasure  is  the 
harmony  between  external  conditions  and  internal  impulses,  having  for 
their  purpose  the  canceling  of  some  defect  or  want.  Pain  is  felt  where 
existing  facts  do  not  agree  with  one’s  desires.4  While  pleasure  and  pain 
thus  do  furnish  a  sort  of  union  between  subject  and  object,  this  syn¬ 
thesis  is  only  of  an  abstract  and  formal  character,  only  taking  account  of 
this  relationship  from  the  individual’s  own  subjective  point  of  view.  Con¬ 
sequently,  pleasure  attaches  itself  to  all  sorts  of  objects,  and  there  is  no 
unitary  principle  in  it  as  regards  the  object  in  its  true  universality. 5 

A  further  stage  in  the  transition  from  the  primitive  state  of  the  will 
as  merely  natural  impulse,  unguided  by  reflection,  and  the  will  as  abso¬ 
lutely  free,  is  represented  by  passionate  action.  At  first  the  will  was  only 
natural  impulse  or  inclination,  influenced  by  pleasure.  If,  now,  the  prac- 

1  Closing  words  of  the  Vocation  of  the  Scholar,  quoted  from  Smith. 

2  “Er  war  eine  der  tiichtigsten  Personlichkeiten,  die  man  je  gesehen”  (Goethe). 

3  Philosophy  of  Mind  (trans.  by  Wallace),  §472;  Werke,  VII,  Part  II,  364. 

4  Ibid.,  474. 

s  “  Philosophische  Propadeutik,  ”  Werke,  XVIII,  p.  56;  trans.  by  W.  T.  Harris, 
Journal  0}  Speculative  Philosophy,  IV,  174. 


78 


PLEASURE  IN  NON -HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


tical  spirit  throws  itself  in  its  totality  into  any  one  particular  form  of 
impulse,  we  have  passion.  Passion,  like  subjective  impulse,  is  neither 
good  nor  bad  in  itself;  it  is  subjective  and  contingent.  Before  man  has 
become  free  and  rational,  the  Spirit  often  directs  his  activities  through 
the  instrumentality  of  passion.  Thus  the  great  results  of  history  have 
been  accomplished  through  men  who  were  not  at  all  conscious  of  lofty 
moral  ends,  but  acted  for  their  own  selfish  interests  and  purposes.  Thus 
the  Spirit  craftily  employed  their  impulses  and  passions  for  the  carrying 
out  of  ethical  purposes,  and  objectifying  them  in  institutions.1 

The  next  stage  in  the  transition  is  that  of  happiness.  In  this  particular 
impulses  and  desires  are  no  longer  followed  immediately,  for  the  sake  of 
the  pleasure  involved  in  them.  They  are  instead  compared  with  one 
another,  weighed,  and  calculated.  Happiness  is  represented  as  a  totality 
of  enjoyment,  and  furnishes  a  standard  by  which  particular  impulses  are 
limited  and  co-ordinated,  and  one  does  not  give  way  to  what  will  afford 
only  momentary  enjoyment.  In  this  way  the  grossness  of  animal  pleasure 
is  refined,  and  man’s  dispositions  and  tastes  are  softened  and  improved. 
But  the  universalizing  which  takes  place  in  happiness  is  still  subjective 
and  formal,  and  does  not  take  account  of  the  object.  Thought,  however, 
has  the  upper  hand  at  this  stage,  and  considerable  progress  over  the 
preceding  stages  has  been  made.2 

When  one  at  last  enters  upon  the  rational  stage,  the  contrast  between 
subjective  individuality  represented  by  individual  interests,  and  the  rights 
of  the  world,  is  recognized,  and  a  sort  of  working  adjustment  between  the 
two  is  effected.  Here  we  have  the  field  of  morality  (Moralitat).  In 
the  final  stage  the  two  elements,  subjective  and  objective,  which  were 
still  opposed  in  morality,  are  brought  together  in  a  higher  synthesis,  and 
we  have  concrete  social  morality  (Sittlichkeit) ,  in  which  the  content  of 
morals  has  become  objective  and  universal,  and  is  revealed  in  institutions, 
such  as  the  family,  state,  and  church.  In  this  final  stage  pleasure  and 
happiness  evidently  have  no  place  in  determining  the  ends  of  action,  or 
furnishing  a  moral  ideal.  One’s  whole  concern  is  to  realize  the  object 
itself,  and  its  subjective  relation,  expressed  by  pleasure  and  happiness, 
is  utterly  lost  sight  of,  and  is  a  matter  of  indifference.3 

But  before  morality,  however  objectified  as  social  morality,  can  be 
realized  in  the  action  of  a  finite  being,  it  must  find  expression  in  his  voli- 

1  Werke,  IX,  p.  41;  Philosophy  of  History  (translated  by  Sibree),  34. 

2  Philosophy  of  Right  (trans.  by  S.  W.  Dyde),  §20;  Werke  VIII,  §20;  cf.  Werke, 
XVIII,  p.  58;  Harris,  op.  cit.,  176. 

3  Werke,  VII,  ii,  §472,  addition;  XVIII,  pp.  56  f;  Harris,  op.  cit.,  174. 


SEVERAL  NINETEENTH-CENTURY  NON-HEDONISTS 


79 


tional  processes.  To  initiate  action,  interest  must  be  aroused  and  for 
great,  energetic  action,  this  interest  must  take  the  strongly  emotional  form 
of  passion.1  Hegel  thus  agrees  with  Kant  in  finding  feeling  necessary 
in  the  mechanism  of  the  moral  act,  although  not  properly  determining 
the  grounds  for  action.  Through  the  instrumentality  of  thought  and 
reflection  Hegel  believes  that  the  universal  element  represented  by  ethics 
and  religion  will  not  only  be  recognized  by  the  mind,  but  will  awaken 
interest  and  passion,  and  become  expressed  in  action. 

The  difficulty  in  making  a  course  of  action  that  has  been  presented 
to  the  mind  get  expressed  in  feeling  in  this  way  is  apparent.  It  seems 
to  one  that  Hegel ’s  ethical  account  suffers  at  this  point  from  its  complete 
divorce  between  thought  and  feeling.  If  the  action  of  the  mind  in  which 
the  higher  ethical  values  are  recognized  could  have  been  a  psychosis  in 
which  thought  and  feeling  were  both  present,  he  would  not  have  had  to 
connect  the  two  in  what  impresses  one  as  really  an  external  and  arbitrary 
manner,  in  order  to  secure  action.  It  seems  as  though  Hegel’s  position 
would  need  but  slight  modification  in  order  to  escape  this  difficulty. 
Just  as  pleasure  is  a  harmony  between  desires  and  external  conditions 
on  the  subjective  side  when  we  act  merely  upon  impulse,  so,  when  our 
vision  is  widened  and  we  intellectually  recognize  social  morality  in  its 
objectivity,  our  feelings  are  similarly  widened  in  their  scope.  In  the  final 
synthesis  of  subject  and  object  of  which  he  speaks,  when  the  self  has 
become  identified  with  the  object  in  thought  and  action,  its  feelings  have 
become  widened  at  the  same  time,  so  that  these  are  vitally  dependent 
upon  social  realization  for  their  character.  In  this  case,  happiness,  viewed 
in  this  widened  sense  and  taken  in  its  totality,  would  be  correlative  with 
morality,  social  morality,  and  religion,  taken  in  their  totality.  The  diffi¬ 
culty  that  stood  in  the  way  of  Hegel’s  taking  such  an  attitude  was  the 
same  dualism  present  in  Kant  and  Fichte.  All  three  assume  psycho¬ 
logical  hedonism  for  the  empirical  self,  and  have  to  oppose  to  this  a  rational 
self  in  which  pleasure  is  not  the  end  of  action.  Had  they  given  more 
attention  to  psychology,  and  discovered  that  neither  impulsive  nor  delib¬ 
erate  action  is  actuated  by  an  inevitable  motivation  in  the  direction  of 
pleasure,  this  dualism  in  their  ethics  would  have  been  unnecessary. 

B.  SCHOPENHAUER 

Schopenhauer’s  primal  impulse  to  activity — “the  will  to  live” — is 
much  the  same  idea  that  we  have  found  in  Fichte.  The  very  different 

1  Werke,  VII,  ii,  §§474,  475  and  addition;  IX,  pp.  28,  29;  Wallace,  op.  cit.,  Sibree, 
op.  cit.,  23  ff.  This  is  an  adaptation  of  the  Kantian  doctrine  of  interest;  cf.  p.  67 
above. 


8o 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


significance  attached  to  this  impulse  by  Schopenhauer  is  largely  due  to 
temperamental  causes.  Fichte’s  was  an  intensely  active  personality, 
and  to  him  the  notion  that  the  goal  to  which  the  primal  impulse  is  directed 
is  infinitely  removed,  is  a  welcome  assurance  of  immortality,  and  a  blessed 
life  consisting  in  ceaseless  struggle  and  progress.  Schopenhauer,  on 
the  other  hand,  being  of  a  nature  which  craves  the  rewards  of  success, 
but  finds  the  struggle  and  effort  of  attainment  unwelcome,  recognizing 
nothing  good  in  activity  apart  from  its  results,  and  seeing  that  these  last 
are  never  fully  gained,  concludes  that  the  will  to  live  is  essentially  evil, 
and  all  human  activity  is  vain  and  abortive.1 

The  Platonic  definition  of  pleasure  and  pain,  as  used  by  Kant  and 
Leibniz,  has  been  shown  to  be  implicitly  pessimistic.  These  writers, 
however,  had  many  other  ideas  in  which  they  were  more  interested,  and 
did  not  discover  these  pessimistic  implications ;  and  if  they  had,  this  would 
simply  have  resulted  in  their  correcting  their  accounts  of  pleasure,  so  as 
to  recognize  the  pleasure  of  activity  for  its  own  sake.  Schopenhauer, 
on  the  other  hand,  snatched  upon  this  definition  of  pleasure,  worked  out 
its  latent  pessimism  to  its  logical  conclusions,  and  found  in  it  a  confirma¬ 
tion  of  his  doctrine.  He  reasoned  that  since  pleasure  simply  consists  in 
the  consciousness  of  the  removal  of  a  want,  and  the  want  itself  is  the 
occasion  of  pain,  and  so  pleasure  is  merely  negative  and  transient,  while 
pain  is  positive  and  continuous  with  consciousness  itself,  the  pain  in  fife 
must  obviously  outweigh  the  pleasure.  Happiness,  therefore,  thought  of 
as  a  state  of  continuous  and  unalloyed  pleasure,  is  a  contradiction  in 
terms,  and  an  absolute  impossibility. 

Two  other  Kantian  ideas  of  which  Schopenhauer  makes  use  in  this 
connection  are  the  disinterestedness  of  moral  action,  and  the  disinterest- 
edness  of  aesthetic  pleasure  in  the  beautiful — the  latter  a  conception  in 
the  Critique  of  Judgment  of  which  Kant  himself  did  not  make  any 
ethical  application.2  The  only  recourse  to  escape  from  existence,  which  is 
inevitably  disappointing,  is  to  deny  the  will  to  live,  to  cease  to  strive,  and 
cease  to  have  interests.  He  recognizes  in  sympathy,  a  conception  derived 
from  British  sources,  the  only  positively  justifiable  interest  which  one  may 

1  The  chief  sources  for  Schopenhauer’s  attitude  upon  our  problem  are  the  “prize 
essay”  on  the  Basis  of  Morality  (trans.  by  A.  B.  Bullock);  The  World  as  Will  and 
Idea ,  Book  IV,  esp.  §  65,  and  chap,  xlvii;  and  a  short  essay  “On  Ethics”  in  the  Parerga 
und  P arilopomena  (trans.  by  E.  B.  Bax  in  Schopenhauer's  Selected  Essays,  “Bohn 
Library”). 

2  Though  Kant  did  attach  some  moral  significance  to  the  feeling  of  the  sublime. 
See  p.  65  above,  footnote  5. 


SEVERAL  NINETEENTH-CENTUPY  NON -HEDONISTS 


8 1 


have;  and  this  constitutes  the  basis  of  morality  for  him.  Sympathy  itself, 
however,  involving  a  denial  of  personal  and  selfish  desires,  is  in  a  sense 
disinterested.  The  hope  of  success  in  moral  achievement  in  thus  denying 
the  personal  will  through  sympathy  is  afforded  by  aesthetic  contemplation, 
whose  disinterested  satisfaction  affords  temporary  relief. 

The  answer  to  Schopenhauer,  of  course,  is  to  indicate  the  desirableness 
of  activity  for  its  own  sake,  by  pointing  out  the  pleasures  of  unimpeded 
activity,  and  the  consequent  possibility  of  a  happiness  consisting  in  con¬ 
stant  activity.  The  failure  of  such  writers  as  Leibniz  and  Fichte  to 
develop  this  conception  of  pleasure,  using  instead  the  utterly  inadequate 
Platonic  definition,  afforded  Schopenhauer  the  opportunity  to  use  the 
conception  to  fortify  his  pessimism.  An  important  service  of  the  latter 
was  to  call  forth  this  necessary  correction  in  the  definition  of  pleasure 
and  happiness. 

C.  HERBART 

A  more  positive  ethical  use  of  Kant’s  aesthetic  doctrine  had  already 
been  made  by  Herbart.  Through  aesthetic  pleasure  he  thought  that  the 
narrowness  of  the  Kantian  morality,  and  its  abstract,  empty  character, 
could  be  overcome.1  Pleasure,  in  Herbart ’s  psychology,  is  due  to  the 
harmonious  co-operation  of  the  different  ideas,  and  pain  to  their  disa¬ 
greement.  When  a  presentation,  upon  its  emergence  above  the  threshold 
of  consciousness,  is  in  harmony  with  the  presentations  already  there,  a 
pleasant  feeling  ensues;  but  when  some  of  the  presentations  present  in 
consciousness  strive  to  thwart  and  inhibit  the  new  presentation,  while 
others  aid  it,  the  consequent  tension  is  painful.  Such  pleasures  and  pains 
are  often  empirical,  and  involve  no  a  priori  principles.  Consequently,  a 
happiness  composed  of  pleasures  merely,  without  further  specification, 
would  not  be  a  proper  end  of  morality.2 

However,  as  Kant  had  himself  recognized  in  the  Critique  oj  Judgment , 
the  feeling  of  the  beautiful  is  not  of  this  empirical  and  indeterminate 
character.  It  arouses  involuntary  and  disinterested  pleasure,  which  is 
a  priori.  Herbart  concludes  from  this,  that  a  morality  based  upon  the 
feeling  of  the  beautiful  will  have  the  necessary  universality  and  objec¬ 
tivity.3  He  distinguishes  five  different  and  not  further  reducible  forms 
of  moral  beauty:  inner  freedom  (agreement  of  the  will  with  the  judgment); 
perfection,  due  to  energy,  variety,  and  co-operation  of  desires  and  striv- 

1  M.  Mauxion,  La  metaphysique  de  Herbart ,  317  ff. 

2  Such  an  interpretation  seems  justifiable  from  such  passages  as  Werke,  XII, 
126  (Hartenstein's  ed.). 

3  Allgemeine  praktische  Philosophic ,  Introduction. 


82 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


ings;  benevolence —a  social  principle  due  to  the  agreement  of  one ’s  will 
with  that  of  others;  right;  and  equity.  The  first  three  of  these  principles 
please  positively;  the  latter  two,  negatively— i.  e.,  because  their  opposites 
displease  us.1 

This  Herbartian  scheme  may  be  regarded  as  an  advance  upon  Kant  and 
Hegel,  in  giving  a  larger  content  to  morality,  by  introducing  the  feelings, 
and  by  the  broader  significance  which  the  doctrine  of  interest,  now  much 
current  in  educational  circles,  is  able  to  assume  in  consequence.  It  also 
represents  an  advance  in  recognizing  the  value  of  psychology  for  ethics. 
Aside  from  the  objections  to  its  mechanical  view  of  consciousness,  and 
its  failure  to  provide  for  a  self — difficulties  which  do  not  concern  us  here — 
the  great  deficiency  in  the  account  is  its  failure  to  give  any  adequate  grounds 
for  the  force  and  authority  of  duty.  Morality  certainly  seems  to  ordinary 
consciousness  to  have  greater  force  and  a  more  categorical  nature  than 
aesthetic  principles  can  have.  Herbart’s  partial  recognition  of  this  in 
asserting  that  moral  beauty  is  superior  to  all  other  kinds,  and  is  unique, 
implicitly  confesses  that  morals  really  must  be  something  more  than  even 
the  highest  branch  of  aesthetics. 

D.  LOTZE 

That  a  larger  significance  should  be  attributed  to  feeling  in  ethics 
is  not  surprising  in  the  case  of  a  writer  belonging  past  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  with  its  wider  interests  and  sympathies,  and  its  larger 
recognition  in  its  religious,  social,  political,  and  literary  activities  of  the 
genuine  worth  and  significance  of  feeling  and  sentiment.  The  character 
of  Lotze ’s  problem,  and  the  attitude  which  he  took,  may  also  be  supposed 
to  have  exercised  an  influence  in  the  same  direction.  A  writer  who  recog¬ 
nized  the  significance  and  worth  of  a  mechanical  interpretation  of  the 
universe  on  the  one  hand,  but  believed  at  the  same  time  that  such  mechan¬ 
ical  laws  are  subordinate  to  mental  activity,  would  naturally  be  led  to 
perceive  in  feeling  something  that  distinguishes  man  from  the  mechanism 
of  nature,  and  to  ascribe  to  it  an  importance  as  an  evaluating  and  teleo¬ 
logical  factor.  Unfortunately,  Lotze  never  worked  out  his  ethical  doctrine 
in  detail,  never  writing  the  portion  of  the  Metaphysics  in  which  this  was 
to  be  presented.  We  are  therefore  forced  to  derive  these  from  a  few  pas¬ 
sages  in  the  Micro cosmus  and  the  outlines  of  his  lecture  courses.  This 
is  the  more  disappointing  because  his  presentation  of  feeling  and  happi- 

1  Op.  cit.,  Book  I;  Einleitung  in  die  Philosophic  §§90  ff.  Professor  A.  W.  Small, 
in  his  General  Sociology,  chap,  xxxii  (Chicago,  1905),  similarly  finds  in  human  con¬ 
duct  six  not  further  reducible  interests. 


SEVERAL  NINETEENTH-CENTURY  NON-HEDONISTS  83 


ness  in  their  moral  significance  is  unique  in  several  respects,  and  extremely 
suggestive. 

Psychologically,  he  thinks  the  hypothesis  probably  correct 

that  feelings  are  the  results  and  tokens  of  the  agreement  or  disagreement  between 
the  excitations  produced  in  us,  and  the  conditions  of  our  permanent  well-being. 
Pleasure  would  therefore  depend  upon  every  encitement  to  the  use  of  our  natural 
capacities  within  the  limits  of  these  conditions,  and  it  would  rise  in  degree  with 
the  intensity  of  these  encitements;  on  the  contrary,  pain  would  depend  upon 
the  fact  that  the  excitations  suffered  are  at  strife  with  the  aforesaid  conditions.1 

This  definition  clearly  recognizes  the  pleasure  in  activity.  It  has  another 
consequence  of  ethical  significance  for  Lotze.  Pleasure  and  pain  thus 
defined  are  simply  general  designations  for  a  great  variety  of  feelings, 
whose  specific  content  is  not  taken  into  account  in  saying  whether  they 
are  pleasant  or  painful. 

Consequently,  to  set  up  “pleasure  in  general,”  or  happiness  simply 
composed  of  pleasure,  as  a  moral  criterion  would  be  to  set  up  something 
that  is  never  actually  experienced  by  us  in  so  vague  a  manner.  We  never 
experience  pleasure  in  general  any  more  than  we  do  color  in  general. 
The  particular  pleasures  which  we  do  experience  are  qualitatively  different 
from  one  another,  and  each  has  its  own  value.  Thus  egoistic  hedonism 
rests  upon  a  logical  fallacy.  The  thought  is  the  same  as  Hegel’s,  when 
he  said  that  pleasure  is  formal  and  empirical,  lacking  in  any  true  objec¬ 
tivity.  Lotze  has  made  an  advance  in  stating  the  principle  in  psycho¬ 
logical  terms.  Usually  we  do  not  think  of  hedonism  as  open  to  the  charge 
of  basing  its  moral  principles  upon  an  empty  abstraction.  This  reproach 
is  usually  reserved  for  Kant.  However,  it  is  clear  that  to  make  pleasure 
or  happiness  the  moral  criterion,  without  further  specification,  will  not 
serve  to  account  for  the  moral  distinctions  which  we  all  recognize.2 

While  thus  objecting  to  hedonistic  formalism,  Lotze  still  believes 
that  moral  values  are  due  to  feeling.  All  self-consciousness,  in  the  first 
place,  is  due  to  feeling.  Without  this,  to  be  sure,  one  could  be  conscious 
of  one’s  self  and  others  as  all  beings  in  a  world,  as  subjects  each  of  which 
is  its  own  object;  but  the  uniqueness  of  selfhood,  the  different  valuation 
given  to  one’s  own  affairs,  all  desire  to  change  any  relations  in  the  world, 
are  due  to  feeling.3  And,  in  the  second  place,  the  distinctions  which  make 
some  acts  moral,  and  others  immoral  are  due  to  qualitative  distinctions 

1  Outlines  of  Psychology  (trans.  by  Ladd),  §  48;  cf.  Metapliysic ,  translated  by 
Bosanquet,  II,  225  f. 

2  Outlines  of  Psychology ,  §  8. 

3  Ibid.,  §§52,  53;  Bosanquet,  op.  cit .,  I,  248-51,  687  ff. 


84 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


in  feelings — i.  e.,  because  we  experience  different  kinds  of  pleasure  with 
different  moral  values.  Sensuous  feelings  have  regard  only  to  the  well¬ 
being  of  the  individual  person  experiencing  them.  Ethical  and  aesthetic 
feelings,  on  the  other  hand,  are  expressions  of  the  furtherance  or  disturb¬ 
ance  of  the  universal  spirit  in  us.1 

All  moral  action  is  thus  due  to  feelings;  but  these  are  not  merely 
feelings  of  pleasure  and  pain  defined  abstractly,  but  with  regard  to  their 
content  which  is  varied,  individual,  unique.  It  is  to  pleasure  in  this  con¬ 
crete  sense  that  we  owe  all  the  values  which  we  can  recognize.  The 
highest  good  is  accordingly  happiness,  or,  better,  blessedness,  taken  in 
this  concrete  sense,  and  recognized  as  involving  the  happiness  of  the  uni¬ 
verse  as  a  whole,  and  not  our  own  happiness  apart  from  this,  but  as  included 
in  it. 

Blessedness  is  of  an  aesthetic  character.  In  beauty  we  have  a  per¬ 
ception  of  harmony  between  what  is  and  what  ought  to  be  in  a  finite 
instance.  And  this  harmony  is  not  individual,  limited  to  the  personal 
experience  of  the  person  who  perceives  it,  as  is  the  merely  agreeable, 
but  has  a  certain  objectivity  and  universality,  and  may  be  recognized  by 
everyone.2  Blessedness,  apparently,  would  be  harmony,  not  different 
in  character  from  what  we  have  in  beauty,  but  which  would  extend  to 
the  entire  universe.  Our  present  theoretical  knowledge  is  not  sufficient 
to  prove  to  us  that  the  realizing  of  this  blessedness  is  the  aim  that  we  see 
manifested  in  the  world,  or  that  such  a  concord  does  take  place  in  the 
world,  viewed  in  its  totality.  But  where  such  a  harmony  is  perceived 
by  us  in  a  particular  phenomenon,  we  recognize  beauty;  and  this  fact 
leads  us  to  believe  in  the  possibility  in  the  world  taken  as  a  whole. 

It  is  only  by  supposing  that  this  is  the  supreme  aim  of  the  world  that 
we  can  explain  the  phenomena  of  inspiration,  adoration,  and  moral  obli¬ 
gation.  Lotze  thus  suggests  a  new  manner  of  presenting  the  moral  postu¬ 
lates.  He  criticises  Kant’s  presentation  of  the  moral  law  because  it  takes 
no  notice  of  values.  The  imperativeness  of  duty  can  be  explained  only 
on  the  ground  that  the  content  of  duty  has  value:  value  can  only  be  a 
matter  of  feeling;  and  since  the  feeling  in  the  case  of  moral  values  is  not 
our  own,  it  has  to  be  referred  to  an  infinite  Spirit,  God.3 

Lotze ’s  use  of  blessedness  reminds  us  very  much  of  Fichte.  The 
difference  is,  that  while  Fichte  developed  the  thought  chiefly  in  his  later 
writings,  the  idea  is  more  fundamental  in  Lotze ’s  ethics,  and  the  aesthetic 

1  Outlines  of  Psychology,  §  50. 

2  Outlines  of  Aesthetics  (translated  by  Ladd)',  §  12. 

3  Outlines  0}  the  Philosophy  of  Religion  (trans.  by  Ladd),  ii4ff. 


SEVERAL  NINETEENTH-CENTURY  NON-HEDONISTS  85 


side  is  presented.  He  also  follows  Fichte  in  the  employment  of  conscience 
(which  with  him  as  with  Fichte  is  a  feeling)  as  the  guide  in  morality.  He 
says,  however,  that  conscience  speaks  unambiguously  only  in  respect 
to  the  simple  and  pure  relations  of  one  will  to  another,  and  that  in  more 
intricate  matters  we  must  look  to  axioms  derived  from  general  experience.1 

Lotze  represents  an  advance  upon  the  Kant-Fichte-Hegel  develop¬ 
ment  in  his  recognition  that  feeling  is  not  only  a  necessary  instrument 
in  the  mechanism  of  the  moral  act  after  the  moral  judgment  has 
taken  place  (as  these  authors  recognized),  but  also  that  feeling  furnishes 
the  values  employed  in  the  moral  judgment  also.2  The  aesthetic  character 
of  morality,  and  the  analogy  between  beauty  and  happiness,  had  already, 
as  we  have  seen,  been  suggested  by  Herbart.  But  in  Lotze ’s  insistence 
that  feeling  is  an  original  factor  in  experience  as  truly  as  cognition,  and 
not  merely  secondary  phenomenon  due  to  the  interaction  of  thought 
presentations,  he  represents  a  genuine  advance  upon  Herbart. 

The  ideas  suggested  by  Lotze  seem  to  the  present  writer  very  suggestive 
and  it  is  greatly  to  be  regretted  that  he  did  not  live  to  write  them  out  and 
publish  them  in  full.  The  difficulty  in  such  a  view  is  that  the  analogy 
between  ethical  and  aesthetic  judgments  is  not  a  complete  parallel.  Moral 
imperatives  have  a  deeper  and  more  thoroughgoing  objectivity  and  uni¬ 
versality.  Whether  Lotze  could  have  met  this  difficulty  satisfactorily 
is  the  question. 

E.  GREEN 

Feeling  with  Green  is  a  logical  prerequisite,  not  only  for  ^//-con¬ 
sciousness,  as  we  have  seen  in  the  case  of  Lotze,  but  for  any  consciousness. 
Animals  have  this,  in  the  sense  of  a  felt  impulse  after  riddance  from  pain, 
and  will  in  the  sense  of  ‘‘activity  determined  by  feeling.”3  By  pleasure 
Green  understands  “any  unimpeded  activity,”4  or  “realization  of  capa¬ 
city,”5  thus  definitely  recognizing  the  pleasure  of  activity.  In  the  animal 
state,  action  is  initiated,  as  Green  supposes,  by  immediate  presentations 
of  pleasure  and  pain.  If  there  ever  occurs  a  situation  in  human  experi¬ 
ence  in  which  there  is  action  immediately  for  pleasurable  or  painful  feel¬ 
ing,  such  action  is  upon  the  same  plane,  and  is  non-moral. 

To  a  selj-  conscious  soul,  however,  feelings  have  an  altogether  altered 
significance,  he  describes  his  feelings  to  himself,  distinguishes  himself 
from  them,  and  “is  conscious  of  them  as  manifold  relations  in  which  he, 
the  single  self,  stands  to  the  world — in  short  as  manifold  facts.”6  The 

1  Outlines  of  Practical  Philosophy ,  §9.  4  Ibid.,  §276. 

2  Cf.  Microcosmus  (translation),  I,  244-48.  s  Ibid.,  §361. 

3  Prolegomena  to  Ethics ,  §  119.  6  Ibid.,  §  120. 


86 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


unity  which  is  given  to  feeling  in  self-consciousness  alters  the  character 
of  desire  completely.  In  the  animal  state  desire  is  for  immediate  pleasant 
feeling.  In  the  human  state,  on  the  other  hand,  desire  is  for  objects. 
In  the  attainment  of  these  objects  it  is  thought  that  a  certain  self-satis¬ 
faction  will  be  found.  But  the  objects  are  not  desired — or  at  least  the 
chief  incentive  in  any  desire  is  not  for  any  enjoyable  feeling  tone  that 
attends  the  attainment  of  the  object. 

The  argument  by  which  this  is  reached  is  both  positive  and  negative. 
Positively,  it  is  the  main  thesis  iq  this  doctrine  of  knowledge  that  what 
Kant  calls  the  “ objective  unity  of  apperception”  is  due  to  the  action 
of  the  self  in  organizing  experience.  Without  the  work  of  the  self  we 
should  not  perceive  objects  at  all.  Consequently,  we  could  not  desire 
them.  All  that  we  should  desire  wTould  be  such  feelings  as  we  had  experi¬ 
enced  that  were  pleasurable.  It  thus  seems  to  run  as  a  corollary  to  his 
epistemology  that  a  self-conscious  being  should  desire  certain  of  the  objects 
which  he  perceives.  Just  as  his  intellectual  life  forms  a  unity  in  conse¬ 
quence  of  its  organization  by,  and  with  reference  to,  a  self,  so  his  practical 
life  is  organized  about  this  self  whose  satisfaction  it  seeks.  All  desire 
is  for  self-satisfaction;  objects  are  desired  because  one  imagines  that 
the  self  will  feel  satisfaction  in  them. 

Negatively,  Green  devotes  much  space  to  showing  that  pleasure  can 
not  be  the  principal  aim  of  a  self-conscious  being,  wdiether  his  action  is 
moral  or  immoral.  There  is  no  unitary  principle  in  pleasure.  Pleasure 
can  be  found  in  any  unimpeded  activity  whatever.  Any  person  who 
has  regard  for  anything  beyond  the  passing  moment  cannot  find  satis¬ 
faction  in  pleasure.  The  aim  for  a  life  of  continuous  pleasure  or  a  sum 
of  pleasures  is  impossible.  Here  Green’s  position  is  similar  to  Hegel’s. 
The  difference  is  that  Hegel  regards  action  for  pleasure  as  possible,  and 
as  practiced  by  persons,  but  as  irrational  and  immoral;  Green  does  not 
think  that  pleasure  can  ever  be  the  object  of  a  self-conscious  being;  at 
least,  if  it  can,  action  in  such  a  condition  is  not  immoral,  but  non-moral.1 

There  is  always  pleasure  present  as  the  result  of  any  satisfaction  of 
self;  this  is  the  reason  why  men  sometimes  imagine  that  the  desire  for 
objects  is  a  desire  for  the  pleasure  which  attends  their  attainment.2  Green 
concedes  that  any  interest  or  desire  for  an  object  may  come  to  be  rein¬ 
forced  “by  desire  for  the  pleasures  which,  reflecting  upon  past  analogous 
experience,  the  subject  of  the  interest  may  expect  as  incidental  to  its  satis¬ 
faction.  ”3  This  concession  to  the  doctrine  of  “cool  self-love”  is  made 
with  emphasis  upon  the  condition  that  this  desire  is  to  be  understood  as 

1  Op.  cit.,  §§ii2,  125.  2  Ibid.,  §158.  3  Ibid.,  §161;  cf.  §228. 


SEVERAL  NINETEENTH-CENTURY  NON-HEDONISTS  87 


only  reinforcement,  and  as  in  no  way  able  to  take  the  place  of  the  main 
motive — self-realization.  It  is  the  realization  of  those  objects  in  which 
we  are  mainly  interested  that  forms  the  content  of  our  idea  of  happiness.1 

Happiness  for  Green  is  an  ideal  which  leads  a  man  to  suppress  par¬ 
ticular  desires  in  the  interest  of  other  desires,  in  order  that  he  may  attain 
a  state  of  general  well-being  in  which  they  will  all  be  satisfied  so  far  as 
possible.  Such  a  state  is  not  to  be  conceived  of  as  a  co-ordination  of 
pleasures — since  pleasures  do  not  admit  of  co-ordination — but  as  an  ideal 
arising  from  the  unity  of  our  conscious  and  volitional  life.2  The  effort 
for  happiness  psychologically  is  not  an  effort  for  pleasure,  but  for  the  reali¬ 
zation  of  various  objects  of  desire,  and  such  realization  makes  one  the 
subject  of  happiness.  Happiness  is  not  the  direct  aim  of  an  individual, 
any  more  than  pleasure  is.  The  distinction  between  what  is  right  and 
what  is  wrong  is  not  one  that  appertains  to  happiness  any  more  than  it 
does  to  pleasure.  It  is  wholly  a  question  of  the  filling  of  desire,  the  objects 
in  which  one  seeks  to  realize  one’s  self. 

The  only  way  to  test  these  seems  to  be  whether  or  not  they  are  such 
as  will  accord  with  the  moral  ideal  by  affording  “an  abiding  satisfaction 
to  an  abiding  self.”  The  moral  ideal  by  which  they  are  to  be  tested  has 
only  partly  become  explicit  up  to  the  present  time.  We  can  recognize  it 
only  so  far  as  it  has  become  objectified  in  institutions  like  the  family  and 
the  state.  The  moral  ideal  is  social  in  character.  So  it  is  only  in  a  social 
way  that  we  can  come  to  know  the  moral  ideal,  just  as  it  is  only  in  a  social 
way  that  we  come  to  have  self-consciousness  at  all.  A  selfish  life  seems 
to  be  one  in  which  sensuous  impulses  prevail,  and  in  which  one  has  not 
much  social  consciousness,  because  one  has  not  much  .^//-consciousness, 
using  the  term  in  his  technical  manner.3 

For  Green,  then,  pleasure  has  little  moral  significance.  Since  feeling 
is  a  prerequisite  for  self-consciousness,  we  may  say  that  feeling  is  a  pre¬ 
requisite  for  moral  consciousness.  But  this  does  not  furnish  a  criterion 
by  which  we  can  distinguish  what  is  moral  from  what  is  immoral.  True 
happiness  is  the  reward  of  moral  action,  but  this  is  not  composed  of  pleas¬ 
ure,  nor  is  it  the  direct  object  of  desire  and  volition.  The  state  of  true 
happiness,  in  which  the  moral  ideal  is  gradually  being  realized,  cannot 
fail  to  be  regarded  by  us  as  an  enjoyable  one;  but  it  is  questionable  whether, 
in  the  case  of  any  individual  person,  to  say  the  least,  it  is  any  more  enjoy¬ 
able  than  one  in  which  the  moral  ideal  is  not  being  realized — indeed, 

'Ibid.,  §228.  2  Ibid.,  §§127,  128. 

3  At  least  this  is  the  construction  which  I  should  put  upon  the  sermon  on  The 
Witness  of  God.  Cf.  Prolegomena ,  §  232. 


88 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


it  may  not  be  as  much  so.1  Nor  is  he  ready  to  admit  that  moral  action 
upon  the  part  of  the  individual  always  increases  general  happiness,  though 
not  that  of  the  individual  himself.  We  do  not  seek  the  happiness  of 
others  directly,  any  more  than  we  do  our  own.  We  seek  for  others  the 
attainment  of  objects  that  will  afford  satisfaction,  just  as  we  do  for  our¬ 
selves.2  The  moral  reformer  does  not  seek  the  pleasure  of  those  for 
whom  he  labors,  and  Green  thinks  it  doubtful  whether  his  work  increases 
their  pleasure.3 

As  compared  with  Kant,  we  see  an  advantage  in  his  treatment  of 
happiness  in  one  respect.  Green’s  true  happiness  is  the  direct  result 
of  moral  action.  He  postulates  a  future  life  simply  in  order  that  the  reali¬ 
zation  now  going  on  may  be  continued  and  completed.  Thus  he  avoids 
the  difficulties  which  we  observed  in  Kant’s  postulation  of  happiness 
in  the  complete  good.  On  the  other  hand,  one  feels  obliged  to  question 
whether  in  his  scheme  of  self-realization  Green  has  at  all  adequately 
provided  for  the  feeling  side  of  our  nature.  With  him,  as  with  Hegel, 
feeling  occupies  a  rather  incidental  place  in  moral  action.  To  be  sure, 
he  makes  it  a  prerequisite  for  consciousness,  and  in  an  altered  form  for 
self-consciousness;  but  it  plays  no  moral  function,  except  possibly  some¬ 
times  to  reinforce  moral  action.  Introspection  seems  to  assure  us  that 
emotion  plays  a  very  real  part  in  moral  life  and  volition,  and  that  its  place 
can  hardly  be  of  so  fortuitous  a  character  as  he  tries  to  make  out.  If 
feeling  is  of  such  minor  significance,  why  is  it,  as  Green  himself  admits, 
that,  in  its  practical  applications,  Utilitarianism  so  often  coincides  with 
his  view  ?  One  is  led  to  suspect  that  there  must  be  some  reason  for  this 
harmony,  involving  a  closer  harmony  between  happiness  and  the  moral 
ideal  than  he  has  indicated.4 

It  seems,  therefore,  that  Green’s  account  of  self-realization  would 
have  been  more  satisfactory  if  he  had  attached  to  feeling  a  significance 
somewhat  similar  to  that  suggested  by  Lotze.  The  difficulty — and  it  is 
a  serious  one  for  an  ethics  of  self-realization — is  somehow  to  allow  feeling 

1  Prolegomena,  §§276,  277. 

2  Ibid.,  §§  235,  236. 

3  Ibid.,  §277. 

4  An  attempt  to  effect  such  a  union  has  been  made  by  a  keen  critic,  but  partial 
follower  of  Green,  Professor  J.  Dewey,  Syllabus  0}  Ethics  (Ann  Arbor,  Mich.,  1897), 
and  Philosophical  Review,  Vol.  II.  Professor  H.  W.  Stuart,  a  pupil  of  Professor 
Dewey,  has  worked  out  the  logical  aspects  of  this  new  reconstruction  of  self-realiza¬ 
tion,  “Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process”  (published  in  the  Studies  in  Logical  Theory , 
edited  by  Dewey),  and  “The  Logic  of  Self-Realization”  (published  in  the  University 
0}  California  Contributions  to  Philosophy,  Vol.  I). 


SEVERAL  NINETEENTH-CENTURY  NON -HEDONISTS  89 


to  play  a  real  part  in  moral  valuation,  and  yet  give  to  moral  ideals  the 
unconditional  rational  authority  which  they  require.  Green  seems  better 
to  have  fulfilled  the  latter  demand,  and  Lotze  the  former.  To  satisfy 
both  demands  at  the  same  time  is  a  task  open  to  contemporary  self- 
realizationists. 


F.  NIETZSCHE 

Nietzsche  was  mainly  occupied,  in  his  treatment  of  feeling,  in  com¬ 
bating  Utilitarianism,  and  other  doctrines  which  are  disposed  to  make 
pleasure  a  criterion  of  moral  values,  or  the  psychological  motive  to  action. 
While  in  his  earlier  works  we  occasionally  find  a  passage  which  suggests 
the  idea  that  one  should  act  for  one’s  pleasure  and  happiness,1  such  pas¬ 
sages  are  clearly  opposed  to  the  main  tenor  of  his  thought,  and  simply 
indicate  that  he  had  not  yet  thought  out  his  doctrine  thoroughly.  It  is 
only  in  his  posthumous  works  that  we  see  indications  that  the  functional 
part  which  feeling  plays  in  action  is  to  be  taken  account  of.2  The  con¬ 
cessions  there  made,  small  though  they  are,  indicate  that  he  felt  the  neces¬ 
sity  of  taking  some  account  of  pleasure  and  pain,  and  lead  us  to  believe 
that,  if  he  had  been  able  to  complete  Der  Wille  zum  Macht,  he  would  have 
given  us  a  fairly  detailed  statement  of  his  idea  as  to  the  part  that  feeling 
plays  in  action. 

To  be  sure,  this  part  would  not  have  been  an  exalted  one;  but  it  would 
have  been  a  part.  The  only  value  which  he  regards  as  final  is  the  “will 
for  power.”  This  also  furnishes  the  motive  to  action.  But  where  he 
says  that  all  sensations  and  perceptions  ( Empfindungen  und  Sinnes- 
W ahrnehmungen)  originally  have  arisen  in  some  sort  of  relationship  to 
the  pleasure  or  pain  of  the  organism,3  though  unwilling  to  make  pleasure 
and  pain  indicative  of  moral  values  now,  he  seems  to  make  them  represent 
a  necessary  stage  through  which  every  new  constituent  of  our  conscious¬ 
ness  has  passed. 

Pleasure  and  pain  are  phenomena  which  accompany  human  activity, 
though  they  are  never  the  motives  for  it,  nor  the  ends  to  which  it  is  directed. 
They  seem  to  be  the  simplest  and  most  primitive  form  in  which  judgments 
of  value  can  be  made,  pleasure  being  a  feeling  of  increased  power,  and 
pain  of  diminished  power.4  Whether  something  will  be  pleasant  or 

1  E.g.,  Morgenrothe ,  §§  104-8. 

2  Chiefly  in  the  aphorisms  published  in  Vol.  XIII  of  his  Werke,  and  the  portions 
of  Der  Wille  zum  Macht  in  Vol.  XV. 

3  Werke,  XIII,  270. 

4  Werke,  XIII,  254,  271  ff.;  XV,  323,  331  ff.  and  passim. 


9o 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


painful  depends  upon  the  amount  of  strength  which  one  has.  What 
will  appear  painful  and  dangerous  to  a  weak  man  will  be  pleasant  and 
welcome  to  a  strong  one,  who  finds  in  it  an  opportunity  to  exercise  his 
power.1  A  point  that  he  makes  much  of  is  that  pain  is  often  desired 
for  the  opposition  which  it  affords,  and  the  opportunity  of  exercising 
one’s  might  in  overcoming  it.  Pleasure  itself  is  often  experienced  as  a 
kind  of  rhythm,  in  which  pain  keeps  appearing  as  a  stimulus  to  further 
activity  and  increased  pleasure  as  a  result.2  The  fact  that  the  original 
impulse  to  power  quite  as  often  evokes  pain  as  pleasure  is  a  proof  that 
neither  is  its  aim,  but  that  both  are  employed  only  to  indicate  the  means 
for  achieving  power. 

They  indicate  this,  however,  only  very  imperfectly.  They  are  “the 
most  stupid  thinkable  expression  for  judgments.”3  What  they  stand  for 
is  much  better  expressed  in  a  rational  judgment;  the  utility  of  feeling  is 
simply  to  indicate  the  means  by  which  the  will  for  power  can  express 
itself  before  rational  judgments  have  been  formed.  To  prefer  a  feeling 
to  a  rational  judgment  is  to  prefer  an  inherited  tendency  based,  it  may  be, 
upon  an  originally  erroneous  judgment,  instead  of  thinking  out  the  matter 
carefully  for  one’s  self.  “To  trust  to  one’s  feeling — means  to  obey  one’s 
grandfather  and  grandmother  and  their  ancestors  in  a  higher  degree 
than  the  gods  that  dwell  within  us,  namely  our  reason  and  experi¬ 
ence.  ”4 

While  Nietzsche’s  recognition  of  the  pleasure  of  unimpeded  activity 
represents  a  more  adequate  psychological  comprehension  of  pleasure, 
his  general  attitude  in  regarding  pleasure  as  a  primitive  form  of  judgment 
reminds  one  very  much  of  the  rationalists.  Like  them,  he  makes  feeling 
perform  the  same  kind  of  a  function  as  thought,  but  more  imperfectly. 
The  difficulties  involved  in  a  view  of  this  sort  have  perhaps  been  suffi¬ 
ciently  exposed  in  the  discussion  of  the  perfectionists. 

In  his  emphasis  upon  the  principle  that  pain  is  often  willed  in  order  to 
carry  out  our  purposes  (in  his  case  the  will  for  power),  Nietzsche  has 
emphasized  a  fact  which  many  ethical  writers  have  overlooked.  Pain 
need  not  represent  a  lapse  from  a  previous  state  of  well-being.  It  may 
rather  be  an  advance  to  a  higher  state.  To  find  a  piece  of  rag-time  music 
which  in  the  past  has  given  one  entire  satisfaction  now  become  inhar¬ 
monious,  may  indicate  that  one’s  musical  taste  has  improved.  To  feel 

1  Werke,  XV,  331. 

2  Ibid.,  XIII,  274;  XV,  325,328,  332. 

3  Ibid.,  XV,  331. 

4  The  Dawn  of  Day,  §  35  (trans.  by  Johanna  Volz). 


SEVERAL  NINETEENTH-CENTURY  NON-HEDONISTS 


91 


displeasure  in  an  action  which  formerly  has  seemed  quite  right  may  be 
an  indication  that  one’s  moral  discernment  has  improved;  and  the  fact 
that  we  now  feel  displeasure  and  pain  does  not  indicate  a  moral  lapse,  but 
a  moral  advance.  The  appearance  of  the  obstacle  which  affords  the  pain 
gives  us  something  to  be  overcome,  and  is  an  opportunity  for  moral  self- 
realization. 


VII.  CONCLUSION 


In  conclusion  let  us  briefly  review  the  modern  non-hedonistic  develop¬ 
ment  through  which  we  have  passed,  in  its  ethical  attitude  toward  pleasure, 
feeling,  and  happiness. 

When  the  philosophy  of  the  Renaissance  was  led,  by  its  individualistic 
tendencies,  to  recognize  in  personal  pleasure  a  motive  to  action,  no  serious 
problem  at  first  seemed  to  be  involved.  Descartes  defined  pleasure  as 
“the  sense  of  some  perfection.”  He  likewise  defined  happiness  and 
virtue  in  terms  of  perfection.  He  thought  that  in  attaining  individual 
perfection  a  person  is  obtaining  the  most  pleasure  and  happiness  possible, 
and  at  the  same  time  performing  his  duty.  While  laying  more  emphasis 
upon  the  spiritual  and  religious  aspects  of  perfection,  Malebranche  pre¬ 
served  the  same  co-ordination  of  pleasure,  happiness,  and  duty  in  terms 
of  perfection. 

Later  rationalists  had  more  difficulty  in  maintaining  this  co-ordination. 
Spinoza’s  fidelity  to  the  mathematical  method  led  him  to  reduce  feeling 
to  cognitive  terms.  Pleasure  became  confused  consciousness  of  per¬ 
fection,  while  happiness  or  beatitude  was  preserved  in  the  moral  ideal  as 
clear  and  distinct  consciousness  of  perfection.  This  forced  a  sharp  diver¬ 
gence  between  beatitude  and  pleasure,  but  did  not  save  the  former  from 
containing  distinctly  affective  elements — i.  e.,  confused ,  and  hence  imper¬ 
fect ,  thought.  Thus  the  co-ordination  logically  breaks  down,  both  between 
pleasure  and  beatitude,  and  between  beatitude  and  perfection.  It  also 
fails  to  give  much  room  for  any  social  content.  Leibniz  escaped  some  of 
Spinoza’s  difficulties  by  following  Descartes  in  recognizing  intellectual 
pleasures,  and  viewing  happiness  as  an  active  and  progressive  state  in 
which  new  degrees  of  perfection  are  constantly  being  attained.  He  thus 
effects  a  closer  union  between  pleasure  and  happiness  and  the  attainment 
of  perfection.  He  likewise  fails,  however,  to  afford  an  adequate  place 
for  duty  and  social  demands  not  evidently  coincident  with  individual 
perfection  and  pleasure. 

The  difficulties  in  the  rationalistic  co-ordination  appear  with  increased 
sharpness  in  Wolff.  His  use  of  the  mathematical  method  leads  him  to 
reduce  pleasure  to  confused  cognition,  and  even  to  make  it  an  attribute 
of  objects,  losing  sight  of  its  subjective  character  altogether.  Moral 
perfection  he  regards  as  altogether  rational  in  its  nature,  and  quite  opposed 
to  such  confused  elements  as  pleasure  and  impulse.  However,  he  cannot 


92 


CONCLUSION 


93 


wholly  dispense  with  the  sensibility,  and  its  confused  feelings  and  impulses, 
in  order  to  effect  the  carrying-out  of  the  dictates  of  the  reason  in  the  world 
of  action.  The  reward  of  the  attainment  of  perfection,  and  at  least  a 
partial  motive  to  effort  in  this  direction,  must  therefore  consist  in  a  happi¬ 
ness  composed  of  pleasure.  Having  thus  thrown  pleasure  out  of  the 
window  as  confused  and  irrational  thought,  he  is  obliged  to  admit  it  again 
at  the  door  as  the  reward  of  rational  action,  and  the  attainment  of  per¬ 
fection.  The  co-ordination  had  thus  become  full  of  internal  inconsist¬ 
encies  as  well  as  very  narrow  in  its  recognition  of  social  demands,  when 
the  problem  was  again  attacked  by  Mendelssohn.  The  latter  and  his 
contemporaries  cleared  up  the  psychology  of  pleasure,  and  rediscovered 
its  subjective  characteristics.  Influenced  by  the  British  moral  sense 
writers,  Mendelssohn  also  asserted  the  moral  worth  and  dignity  of  the 
feelings.  In  thus  disclosing  the  ethical  significance  of  the  feelings,  how¬ 
ever,  he  made  the  difficulties  in  the  old  co-ordination  in  terms  of  perfection 
more  difficult  than  ever.  The  only  suggestion  toward  a  solution  of  the 
difficulties  which  he  is  able  to  make  is  simply  to  say  that  somehow  the 
reason  must  receive  the  warmth  and  impulsive  character  of  the  feelings 
in  order  to  secure  its  motivation,  while  the  feelings  must  acquire  the  clear 
insight  and  deliberateness  of  the  reason. 

It  was  at  this  point  that  Kant  inherited  the  problem ;  but  before  review¬ 
ing  the  manner  in  which  he  treated  it,  let  us  resurvey  the  development 
in  Great  Britian. 

There  the  movement  had  begun  with  the  same  co-ordination  of  pleas¬ 
ure,  happiness,  morality,  and  perfection;  and  perhaps  with  a  stronger 
conviction  of  the  eternal  and  unconditional  character  of  morality.  When 
the  growth  of  individualism  had  led  to  the  belief  that  the  necessary  motive 
to  action  must  be  found  in  the  feelings  of  the  individual,  the  problem 
was  forced  upon  the  adherents  of  the  old  morality,  how  to  secure  the  moti¬ 
vation  of  this  latter.  Their  empirical  method  gave  them  in  the  main 
free  play  in  attacking  the  problem;  and  to  their  minds,  unclouded  by 
the  notion  of  a  ruling  conception,  the  seriousness  of  the  problem  was 
much  more  clearly  appreciated. 

The  first  method  adopted  attempted  to  secure  the  motivation  of  morality 
by  widening  the  range  of  personal  pleasure  so  as  to  make  it  include  the 
pleasures  of  the  moral  sense,  benevolence,  and  sympathy.  Such  was 
the  effort  of  Shaftesbury,  Hutcheson,  Hartley,  Hume,  and  Adam  Smith; 
the  last  three  of  these  accounting  for  the  genesis  of  these  higher,  moral 
pleasures  through  association.  This  line  of  argument  finally  broke  down, 
as  it  was  found  impossible  to  secure  sufficient  authority  and  stability  for 
a  morality  derived  wholly  from  the  feelings. 


94 


PLEASURE  IN  NON-HEDONISTIC  SYSTEMS 


Before  attempts  to  derive  a  non-hedonistic  morality  from  selfish  con¬ 
stituents  by  means  of  association  and  sympathy  had  ceased,  Butler  had 
already  introduced  a  new  line  of  attack.  He  recognized  the  immediate 
divergence  between  duty  and  pleasure,  but  sought  to  overcome  it  ulti¬ 
mately  by  philosophical  arguments  and  considerations  of  a  future  life. 
The  earlier  Scottish  writers  sought  to  minimize  this  divergence  as  much 
as  possible,  but  had  to  fall  back  upon  Butler’s  arguments  in  the  end. 
However,  the  tendency  to  question  the  genuineness  of  pleasure  as  exclu¬ 
sive  motive  to  action  kept  increasing.  Butler  had  shown  that  immediate 
impulses  are  as  likely  to  be  opposed  to  happiness  as  to  favor  it,  and  that 
self-love  is  a  rational  principle  of  conduct,  and  not  an  immediate  impulse. 
It  was  only  another  step,  though  the  deliberate  Scots  were  a  long  time 
in  taking  it,  to  assert  that  the  moral  sense  is  itself  due  to  original  constit¬ 
uents  independent  from  the  impulse  for  pleasure.  Inevitable  motivation 
in  the  interests  of  pleasure  and  happiness  need  no  longer  be  conceded. 
After  Brown  had  arrived  at  this  position  and  asserted  the  presence  in  our 
nature  of  higher  moral  values,  the  problem  of  pleasure  and  happiness 
seems  to  have  been  felt  to  be  solved,  and  the  discussion  of  it  largely  disap¬ 
pears  from  intuitionist  treatises.  However,  an  interesting  concession 
to  the  utility  of  pleasure  made  by  Martineau  leads  us  to  suspect  that  he, 
at  least,  knew  that  a  working  criterion  of  morality  cannot  ignore  the 
feelings  altogether. 

To  return  to  Kant.  After  he  became  convinced  that  English  ethics 
based  upon  feeling  led  to  difficulties  no  less  serious  than  those  of  the  Wolf¬ 
fian  school,  he  worked  out  his  own  doctrine  of  the  categorical  imperative. 
While  in  this  he  escaped  some  of  the  more  crass  inconsistencies  of  the 
Wolffian  school,  such  as  followed  from  the  inclusion  of  all  morality  within 
the  conception  of  perfection,  and  making  pleasure  an  attribute  of  objects, 
he  nevertheless  had  to  face  two  serious  problems  inherited  from  them: 
(i)  How  is  a  purely  rational  morality  to  secure  its  motivation  by  the  sen¬ 
sible,  affective  nature  of  man,  and  so  be  carried  out  in  action  ?  (2)  What 

is  to  be  the  relation  of  happiness  to  the  attainment  of  such  a  morality  ? 

Kant  answered  the  first  problem  by  securing  the  motivation  of  duty 
through  the  pleasures  and  pains  of  reverence  and  interest  in  the  moral  law. 
He  answered  the  second  by  making  a  happiness  composed  of  pleasures  a 
necessary  ethical  postulate,  and  a  constituent  in  the  complete  good. 

These  somewhat  forced  explanations  were  not  satisfactory  to  the 
successors  of  Kant,  and  our  history  of  nineteenth-century  writers  is  largely 
an  account  of  the  different  ways  in  which  they  endeavored  to  solve  these 
problems  for  themselves. 


CONCLUSION 


95 


Fichte’s  only  solution  of  the  first  problem  was  a  further  expansion  of 
the  idea  of  reverence  into  conscience ;  he  solved  the  second  by  refining 
happiness  from  its  non-moral  constituents,  and  making  it  wholly  consist 
in  intellectual  and  moral  pleasures.  Hegel  solved  the  first  problem  in 
much  the  same  manner  as  Fichte,  and  equally  unsatisfactorily.  He 
solved  the  second  by  making  happiness  only  a  transitional  stage  in  the 
attainment  of  a  higher,  social,  and  objective  morality,  wholly  intellectual 
in  character,  in  which  this  imperfect  ideal  should  be  transcended.  Both 
Fichte  and  Hegel  followed  Kant  in  taking  psychological  hedonism  for 
granted,  and  are  consequently  forced  to  suppose  a  sharp  opposition  between 
the  impulsive,  feeling  side  of  our  nature,  and  the  rational,  moral  side. 
Their  attempts  to  overcome  this  dualism  are  unsuccessful,  Fichte ’s  account 
being  hardly  less  mechanical  than  Kant’s,  and  Hegel’s  eliminating  the 
feelings  entirely  from  final  moral  development. 

The  work  of  Schopenhauer  exposed  the  pessimism  really  involved  in 
Kant’s  psychological  definition  of  pleasure,  and  in  psychological  hedon¬ 
ism — consequences  which  Fichte  and  Hegel  had  overlooked.  Later 
ethical  non-hedonists,  warned  by  Schopenhauer’s  pessimism,  have  avoided 
the  false  premises  of  his  argument. 

The  first  of  Kant’s  problems  thus  no  longer  furnishes  so  acute  diffi¬ 
culties  to  writers  of  this  type,  though  it  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  been 
finally  solved.  A  solution  of  the  second  problem  is  presented  by  Herbart 
and  Lotze,  who  find  in  the  harmony  of  aesthetic  pleasure  an  analogy  to 
the  harmony  that  would  come  from  the  realization  of  moral  effort  in  happi¬ 
ness.  Such  an  analogy,  though  very  suggestive,  fails  to  account  for  the 
unconditional  and  obligatory  character  of  moral  duty. 

Green  is  more  successful  in  working  out  the  development  of  the  moral 
ideal,  as  regards  its  obligatory  character,  and  in  showing  that  it  does  not 
need  to  depend  upon  pleasure  for  its  motivation.  He  fails,  however, 
on  the  other  hand,  in  securing  a  working  criterion  of  moral  values,  since 
valuation  involves  the  feelings,  and  these  he  has  not  adequately  recognized. 

While  none  of  these  attempts  have  solved  either  of  the  problems,  all 
of  them  indicate  some  progress  in  that  direction.  There  certainly  is  some 
significance  in  the  aesthetic  analogy,  though  Lotze  has  exaggerated  it. 
Green’s  theory  of  self-realization,  and  even  Nietzsche’s  caustic  aphorisms 
contain  valuable  material  which  will  assist  future  writers  essaying  these 
problems.  With  the  better  comprehension  of  the  psychology  of  ethics 
which  we  have  at  the  present  time,  we  may  certainly  expect  that  twen¬ 
tieth-century  ethical  writers  will  at  least  make  large  contributions  toward 
their  final  solution. 


